Cricket World Cup tickets are being sold for 100 times their face value on resale websites

Tickets for the Cricket World Cup are being resold for more than £12,000 - or over 100 times their face value - prompting organisers to threaten legal action against websites including Viagogo.

Thousands of tickets are currently being advertised on secondary sites for this summer's tournament, including a dozen tickets for the final at Lord's on 14 July which are being marketed for £12,029 each, despite initially costing £151.

Cricket fans looking for tickets on sites like Viagogo and StubHub are being regularly encouraged to book them quickly, with the site sending out alerts on the screen claiming that more than 1,000 people are looking for the same tickets and they are 'selling fast'.

The World Cup will be hosted at grounds such as Lord's between May and July this year

This suggests there is an active market for resold tickets, despite organisers of the ICC Cricket World Cup stating that 'tickets are strictly non-transferable to any third party' and claiming that they are working hard on enforcement.

A spokesman for the World Cup, which runs from 30 May to 14 July in England and Wales, said: 'We are working closely with lawyers to identify secondary ticket sites which are infringe our terms and conditions. We are taking appropriate enforcement action against them as required.' There is an official pathway for reselling tickets through the Cricket World Cup website, but no tickets are currently available on that platform.

A spokesman for Viagogo told the BBC: 'Viagogo is a marketplace and doesn't buy or sell tickets. Viagogo provides a platform for third party sellers to sell tickets to event goers.

'Event organisers sometimes make claims that they will deny entry to people who have purchased resold tickets. These types of entry restrictions are highly unfair and in our view, unenforceable and illegal.'

They added: 'All tickets on Viagogo are valid and it is perfectly legal to resell a ticket or give it to someone else if you want to.'