Blockchain and Football: What Questions Is the Glow of Fan Tokens Hiding?

Last Friday evening I was sitting in a tea shop in Zindabazar, Sylhet. At the next table sat two young men. One stared at his phone screen and said, "It's up two percent." The other asked, "What is?" He said, "The PSG token." This young man has never set foot in the Parc des Princes. He has never watched a single Ligue 1 match from first minute to last. Yet his phone holds a digital coin called PSG, and its price is swinging before a night match. For more than twenty years I have written the story of the pitch. Sitting in a radio booth, I learned that silence is also a broadcast. But what I am seeing now is not the silence of the stadium; it is the noise of the market. And that noise is drowning out football's real sounds — the roar of the crowd, the scrape of chairs on a rooftop, a neighbour's shout at the moment of a goal. Let us be clear about what a fan token is. In plain terms, it is a digital asset created on a blockchain and issued in the name of a football club. The main platform behind it is Socios.com, whose technology runs on the Chiliz blockchain. In 2026 Juventus became the first major club to launch a fan token. Then, one by one, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Manchester City, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan released their own digital coins. The tickers are familiar: JUV for Juventus, PSG for Paris Saint-Germain, BAR for Barcelona. Whoever buys a token can take part in small votes — which song plays in the stadium, what the kit design looks like, what message the players send. It sounds wonderful. The fan's voice, on the blockchain. But when the crypto fever cooled after 2026, many tokens were found to have fallen more than 90 percent. The fan who thought he had bought a "voice" had in fact bought a volatile speculative asset. In the same period another face of football's blockchain appeared — platforms like Sorare, where digital player cards are traded as NFTs. Star faces, expensive cards, and the dream of quick profit. In this market the star players are brands in themselves. Names like Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo are used to draw the fan. Some release their own NFT collections; some become the face of a platform. But the curious thing is that what a player does on the pitch is measured in goals and assists, while his name off the pitch is measured in the price of a token. The two accounts never match. The context of Bangladesh matters here. In our country cryptocurrency is not legal, and Bangladesh Bank has warned repeatedly. Yet young people in Sylhet, Dhaka and Chattogram are entering this market through VPNs and foreign apps. The reason is simple — love for football and the dream of getting rich quickly blend into one. Now to the real question. Who does this model serve? First, it turns a fan's loyalty into a tradable commodity. A fan's bond with a club was historically non-commercial — an inheritance from father and grandfather, a local identity, a childhood memory. A fan token puts a price tag on that bond. Once a price exists, the feeling itself begins to be measured. If a man says, "I have been Barca all my life," and beside him sits the price of a coin, the line between loyalty and investment blurs. Second, the "transparency" and "decentralisation" so loudly promised by blockchain are nowhere in fan tokens. The supply of tokens is in the club's hands, the rules are in the club's hands, and the outcome of the votes is in the club's hands too, because most votes are advisory, not binding. The fan believes he is deciding; in truth he is buying the sensation of participation. Third, where does the money go? This is the most important question. Profit is shared between the club and the platform. But the fan is left with a vote, a badge, and a coin of unstable price. Is that exchange equal? If an ordinary member can pay a yearly subscription and vote at a club's general meeting, how heavy is a token's vote? In my notebook I have recorded the sounds of spectators for years. In a Sylhet tea shop, the scrape of a chair at the moment of a goal. On a Dhaka rooftop, a neighbour's cry drifting over during a night match. These sounds cannot be recorded on any blockchain, because they are not centralised, and they are not for sale. Here lies a great misunderstanding. We usually assume the only face of blockchain in football is fan tokens and NFTs. But that view looks at the technology, not the fan. The real gap is this: blockchain's greatest promise was transparency and accountability. Where football truly needs that promise is the transfer market. Deals worth tens of millions, intermediary agents, commissions made in the dark. If someone put every transfer fee, every agent payment, every youth-academy investment on a blockchain, in the open, it would be revolutionary. But no one touches it, because that is where the real money is, and clubs do not want the real money to be transparent. Instead, the industry chose the opposite side of the technology — the side that extracts money from fans. A fan token does not seek to solve a problem; it seeks a new revenue stream. That is why a star's face, like Messi's, is used in promotion. Lionel Messi joined Socios as a brand ambassador, and a star draws the fan, and the fan opens his wallet. One more thing should not be forgotten. Many of the clubs that launched fan tokens had ownership in the hands of traditional members. The token scattered that members' power behind a digital vote, but real control stayed in the hands at the top. This is not decentralisation of power; it is a display of power. It is my fortune that I began in the radio era, when broadcasting was one-way — we spoke, the audience listened. Now the technology says the audience will also speak, vote, take part. But the question is whether that participation is truly power, or a beautiful wrapping of power. Clicking a vote button and standing in a stadium until your throat gives out — does anyone want to measure the distance between the two? Another dimension deserves attention — regulation. Some European regulators are already considering whether fan tokens should be treated as securities, because profit expectation lies behind them. Debates are underway in Spain, Italy and Britain. If a token is classed as a security, clubs will have to follow strict rules. Then it may emerge that this product called "fan participation" was in fact a financial instrument hiding behind football's emotion. I remember words from fans. A Barcelona supporter in Dhaka told me, "I bought a token because it felt like I was a part of the club. Now I understand I was only a customer." The sentence is short, but inside it lies a truth about the whole industry. So what happens next? The crypto market will keep rising and falling. Some clubs may abandon fan tokens; some new clubs may join. But the core question will remain — in football, whose service will technology perform? That of the fan who stands all night singing in the stadium, or that of the investor who does not even know the score, only the price? I return to the tea shop in Sylhet. The young man is still staring at his phone screen. The match kicks off in ten minutes. I want to ask, "Who are you for — PSG, or your coin?" But before I can ask, he shouts. Perhaps a goal has been scored, or perhaps his token's price has risen. Which one, even he does not know.