A black market selling thousands of Premier League tickets has been revealed by a BBC investigation.

Companies based at a number of overseas locations, including in a Swiss town with a population of 4,000, are behind it.

They are thought to be using memberships and computer software to obtain tickets at scale through clubs’ online ticket platforms.

The resale of tickets is illegal in the UK, and the Premier League names the websites on an “unauthorised list”., external

Despite this, BBC Sport was able to buy tickets easily through the black market for four of last weekend’s games. The practice has been described as “endemic” in English football.

Sunday’s Manchester derby was sold out weeks ago, but we bought a pair of tickets in the City end days before the match.

We also made purchases for fixtures at Arsenal, Everton and West Ham.

At all four matches, our journalists were able to use the tickets to gain entry to the game.

But for others who have used these websites, this is not always the case, with fans telling BBC Sport they paid for tickets that didn’t let them into games.

The tickets cost us two to four times the face value, and some were sent via UK phone numbers on Whatsapp, on one occasion with strict instructions not to speak to stewards.

The findings have prompted calls for clubs, the Premier League and government to do more to crackdown on the black market.

There is concern that the scale of the market is making it harder for supporters to get tickets from official sources at face value – and also creating a potential safety threat to strict segregation rules.

In response, clubs said they were working hard in this area, and had already cancelled tens of thousands of memberships and tickets.

Concern practice is ‘endemic across the game’

The Premier League’s “unauthorised” list of ticket sellers contains more than 50 websites. Including Stubhub and Vivid Seats, where Chelsea owner Todd Boehly is a director.

We chose to focus on four websites from this list that were accessible in the UK and appeared to be selling the most tickets.

The four sites in total listed tens of thousands of Premier League tickets for sale.

For example, more than 18,000 tickets were advertised for Arsenal v Nottingham Forest alone – nearly a third of the Emirates’ capacity.

BBC Sport was not able to verify whether all these tickets were genuine beyond the ones we bought.

Ticket security expert Reg Walker believes “speculative listings – tickets these websites don’t have” may explain the advertised numbers.

“In reality, probably only 10-25% of those tickets actually exist,” he added.

For context, 10% would mean thousands of tickets for each round of Premier League matches.

Prices we saw ranged from £55 to £14,962, often far exceeding face value and usually including a significant booking fee.

“We had a family of Japanese tourists who paid £2,200 for tickets with an £87 face value,” said Walker, who works with Premier League clubs as a consultant and has been operating in the ticketing industry for 40 years.

Tickets were even listed for Arsenal’s exclusive Diamond Club and Manchester City’s Tunnel Club.

The Football Supporters’ Association called our findings “very concerning”.

“It confirms what we’ve heard anecdotally…this is becoming endemic across the game,” said FSA chair Tom Greatrex.

“Long-term supporters are finding it impossible to get tickets because of the way they are made available through secondary agencies.”

The Premier League, which declined to comment on the findings, sees ticketing as primarily a responsibility of the clubs, but it is in the process of renewing its central support for club anti-touting operations.

All our tickets were transferred digitally, in one instance on the morning of the game, and worked as mobile passes.

Seat numbers were not divulged until the tickets arrived.

For Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium, we ordered an upper tier, behind the goal seat.

What actually arrived was a Club View ticket near the halfway line – a private concourse for £1,200-a-season members, external – that included a free pint.

Days after the game at the Etihad, one digital ticket automatically changed in our mobile wallet – displaying a different seat number and appearing to be for the Champions League fixture against Napoli.

Only two of the clubs we visited responded to a request for comment on our findings.

Arsenal said they had cancelled almost 74,000 accounts attempting to obtain tickets in unauthorised ways as part of “strong action against ticket touting”.

Everton said they have been running “joint operations with Merseyside Police to act against touts operating online and in person”.