Liverpool have shut down 145,000 ticket accounts over the past two years as part of a crackdown against touting, BBC Sport can reveal.
They also issued a record 1,114 lifetime bans last season – a move that followed the discovery of mass manipulation of software used to buy tickets.
The Premier League champions said 500 people were denied entry to Anfield for trying to gain access with a burner phone – used by touts to avoid tickets being traced – in the last 12 months.
It comes after the industrial-scale black market in Premier League tickets was exposed by a BBC Sport investigation last week.
Re-selling is against UK law, but many websites continue to operate by being based outside the country.
The BBC found that resellers often use bot software and fake identities to hoover up hundreds of tickets to be sold on for higher prices, impacting fans’ ability to attend games via official exchanges or membership ballots.
It can leave supporters paying extortionate prices, or being completely out of pocket after buying tickets that do not work, as well as undermining segregation of fans.
Investigators for Liverpool also shut down 162 social media groups – with a combined membership of more than one million users – that were involved in selling fake tickets that never materialised or reselling real tickets at extortionate rates.
Meanwhile, just under 400 targeted stops were also carried out on match days, preventing access to the turnstiles for accounts with suspicious activity.
The 1,114 lifetime bans represent a huge increase on the 75 imposed across the 2023-24 campaign.
