Major sports venues in Britain are as ill-equipped for a drone attack as Gatwick Airport was over Christmas, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found.

Premier League clubs and other event organisers have yet to invest in technology designed to stop a terrorist atrocity or other serious incident, despite it being available before the intrusion that grounded flights for three days at the country’s second-busiest airport.

Those who could afford it have been warned they could soon face their own “Gatwick moment”, or worse, if they failed to join the airport and Heathrow by purchasing detection, tracking and other countermeasures.

That was after the Telegraph was told that just one of the country’s major outdoor sports facilities had fully adopted such technology, which costs hundreds of thousands to install – the same as some football players are paid each week.

It has also already been used successfully elsewhere, including at last summer’s World Cup in Russia, with the head of the country’s secret service recently announcing it had foiled terrorist plots to use drones to attack supporters there.