Fake kits worth £18m seized by police during World Cup
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- Operation Bloxwich recovered over 220,000 pieces of counterfeit football merchandise worth more than £18m across the UK during the World Cup, driven by a spike in demand for fake strips.
- One Birmingham warehouse raid alone yielded 1,618 counterfeit shirts, including replicas of star players France's Kylian Mbappe and Norway's Erling Haaland.
- Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service tested counterfeit shirts against genuine kit and found fakes melted immediately when exposed to flame, while genuine strips had to be forced to ignite, according to watch manager Dave Jackson.
- Detective Sergeant Jamie Kirk warned the fake shirts are unregulated, contain dyes potentially harmful to skin — particularly children's — and are produced in conditions where 'potential damages to you and the people making them is just far too high.'
- Counterfeit kits sell for as little as £12 on several websites, compared with official Premier League strips starting at £85, fueling the demand.
- Kate Caffrey of the Intellectual Property Office said counterfeits are made in appalling conditions by criminal networks that 'target markets where there's demand' and plan to flood the market with fakes for the forthcoming Premier League season.
Why it matters: With counterfeit kits priced at roughly one-seventh of official strips (£12 vs £85 minimum) and an incoming Premier League season primed for exploitation, parents and young fans face a widening consumer-safety hazard — fire risk and skin-damaging dyes — that organized criminal networks are explicitly targeting. The £18m seizure volume signals the scale of an underground market that regulatory bodies acknowledge they cannot fully contain.
