Fake kits worth £18m seized by UK police over safety concerns
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- Operation Bloxwich saw UK police seize more than £18m worth of counterfeit football shirts over the course of the World Cup, recovering over 220,000 pieces of merchandise.
- A single Birmingham warehouse raid netted 1,618 fake strips, including replicas of France's Kylian Mbappe and Norway's Erling Haaland, per the Police Intellectual Property Office.
- Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service tested counterfeit and genuine kits side by side with blow torches and found the fake shirt melted almost immediately, while the genuine one was difficult to ignite.
- Fake shirts sell for as little as £12, compared with official Premier League strips starting at £85, fueling demand during the tournament.
- Detective Sergeant Jamie Kirk warned the unregulated counterfeits contain dyes potentially harmful to skin—particularly children's—and are manufactured in appalling conditions by criminal networks.
- Kate Caffrey, head of intelligence at the Intellectual Property Office, said counterfeiting gangs are already preparing to flood the market with fake shirts ahead of the new Premier League season.
Why it matters: Consumers chasing a roughly £73 price discount are buying unregulated fabric that fire tests show ignites almost instantly, plus dyes flagged as potentially harmful to skin—while the Intellectual Property Office warns criminal networks are now pivoting the same supply chain toward the Premier League season. The £18m seizure is a fraction of what got through; the safety risk extends well beyond World Cup merchandise.
