Brentford are to integrate microchips into their match-day shirts that will prove their authenticity, in a move against the proliferation of counterfeit football kits.
Beginning with the Premier League fixture against Everton on Wednesday night, Brentford will become the first English side to wear shirts that provide a digital guarantee of their provenance, crucial for merchandise often sold for substantial sums at auction.
The club are to use verification technology created by the company Fabricks to prove the kit’s authenticity. Before each match a chip will be heat-pressed on to the bottom of the shirt. The chip then uses “near‑field communication”, similar to the technology used in a contactless bank card, to allow a smartphone to scan for information that will confirm who wore it and when.
The increasing popularity of replica football shirts as fashion and collector’s items has led to a substantial rise in prices in recent years, with the match-worn variety commanding the highest premiums. Match-worn shirts of current Premier League players can be listed on online retailers for £1,000 or more.
As the industry has become more lucrative, however, there has been a rise in forgery. Last year the City of London police and the Intellectual Property Office conducted a joint operation during the men’s European Championship that led to £446,681 of “fake football apparel” being seized by authorities.
According to Corsearch, a company specialising in copyright protection, the sale of counterfeit Premier League shirts generates as much as £180m a year and the total for official sales in the 2022-23 season was £480m.
The chip is used by PSV, Feyenoord and Anderlecht. Fabricks is the sister company of MatchWornShirt, the digital platform where Brentford auction their shirts. The club give the proceeds of their auctions to Heart of West London, a charity that funds research into heart disease and raises awareness of CPR, but the technology would also be effective should the shirt then be sold on.
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Adam Ward, Brentford’s head of partnerships, said he was delighted to agree the deal.
