Blockchain and Cricket's Inner Ledger: From Fan Funds to Fan Tokens

July 2026, Dhaka. Twenty-eight players and staff at Mohammedan SC received letters cutting their salaries by half. I had been embedded with the club for 42 days. With fan groups in Rajshahi and Chattogram, I helped run a Facebook fundraiser that raised 1.2 million BDT, and I handed out the first envelopes myself. When it was over, a small empty space remained in my chest. Who gave how much, who received how much — the account existed, but the witness did not. An account written in one person's notebook can be erased by that person. That empty space has chased me through cricket for years. Today a word is looking straight into it: blockchain.

I kept a notebook through Rajshahi — six straight weeks during the 2026 BPL. Sylhet, Dhaka, the team hotel, the bus. Before and after every match I wrote down who said what, who got what, who asked for what. I did not understand then that the notebook was the simplest definition of a blockchain. Only one difference: I alone owned my notebook.

What blockchain actually is — in stadium language

Think of the scoreboard. On a normal scoreboard, one person sits and writes the runs; if they err or change it on purpose, no one on the field can catch it. A blockchain is a scoreboard whose identical copy sits in the hands of every spectator. When someone adds a run, it appears in every copy at once; if someone tries to change it secretly, every other copy catches it immediately. In technical terms this is a distributed ledger, where transactions link block by block, and rewriting them is nearly impossible. On top sits the smart contract: code with conditions written in, which releases money by itself once conditions are met — no paperwork, no middleman, no delay.

These two things — an immutable ledger and automated contracts — touch three old wounds in cricket directly. First, transparency in player payments. Second, the accounting of fans' money. Third, the true ownership of tickets and memorabilia.

Europe's big football clubs have run fan tokens for several years; supporters buy tokens and gain the right to vote on some club decisions. The wave has reached cricket: some leagues and boards have released digital collectibles or NFTs, and a few places have tested blockchain-based ticketing so tickets cannot be forged and scalping shrinks. Bangladesh's path is different: Bangladesh Bank has repeatedly issued warnings about cryptocurrency trading, so open token trading remains narrow. Yet a warning is not the same as a technology — the core of blockchain, the distributed ledger and smart contracts, works without crypto. And that is where our real question lives.

Where our real pain is: trust, not money

After years inside and around Rajshahi Kings, one thing is clear to me: Bangladesh cricket's biggest crisis is not money, it is trust. Frozen salaries, vanished fund accounts, promises that dissolve — these complaints return every season. And every time, one question rises in a fan's mind: "Where did my money go?"

Imagine a club's salary fund running on a smart contract. Sponsor money enters; the moment conditions are met, a fixed sum moves to the player's account on a fixed day. No hand can freeze it, no one can hide the account. If a fan group raises 1.2 million, where it went and who received it is all open. The problem with fan funds was never a shortage of money; it was a shortage of proof.

(— Root: Mohammedan SC Salary Fund | Scenario: Humanizing fan-led fundraising in long-form.)

Fan Stand: three voices from the notebook

In my notebook, fans' words get their own pages. After Afif Hossain struck 45 off 28 against Khulna Titans in the 2026 BPL, Rajshahi Kings' Facebook group took 3,200 comments in two hours. Reading through them, I set aside three voices. One wrote: "I don't know where the money goes, but the team is mine." A second: "When players hear about unpaid salaries, their minds are not well." The third asked the simplest question: "Can anyone show the account?" The entire blockchain conversation is really an answer to that third fan's question.

Fan tokens: ownership, or a new market?

Here is where caution belongs. Fan tokens look lovely — the fan becomes an "owner," votes, takes part in decisions. But look closely: in most fan tokens the vote is usually over small things — which song plays before a match, which jersey design arrives. On the big decisions — who the team buys, who coaches, where the money goes — the fan has no hand. A fan token does not make the fan an owner; it makes the fan a buyer. Ownership means sharing risk and decisions; being a buyer means only buying.

And there is another trap, the most familiar story in my profession. Small teams grow talent, big teams harvest it — cricket's old rule. I suspect the same rule will run in the blockchain market. A small club's fan community will build a token, and then a big platform will buy that community and its data. Just as the upset story turns into a transfer story the next season, the fan-ownership story may end on a big platform's balance sheet.

Tickets, memorabilia, and the player's share

Another use is clear — ticketing. If every ticket is a unique digital token, the fake-ticket story nearly ends. Scalpers cannot sell the same ticket twice, because the ledger knows whose ticket it already is. The club also knows how many tickets actually entered the gate and how many seats stayed empty.

Then memorabilia. Cricket memorabilia — a match-used ball, a signed bat — now sells in digital collectible form. Here a moral question exists that I raise again and again. When a young player becomes a star with a 45-run innings, how much of the digital memorabilia of that moment does he receive? Often the proceeds go to a big platform's pocket, and the player remains a spectator. A smart contract can fix this split in advance — a run, his share; a catch, his share — written into the deal. Technology can make the player a stakeholder rather than a charity case, if the contract belongs to him.

(— Root: Rajshahi Kings | Scenario: Deep analysis of crowd rhythm and atmosphere.)

There is also real promise in grassroots funding. If a district-level academy keeps donor accounts on a blockchain, expatriate Bangladeshi fans can send small sums directly from abroad, and every taka's destination is visible. In the club culture of Rajshahi that I know, this is not small — here donations often stop "for lack of trust," not for lack of talent.

Then comes governance. The BPL's franchise economy sways every year on the same question — centralised decisions and stuck money. Blockchain will not overturn that power structure; who decides is politics, not technology. But an independent witness to transactions raises the pressure of accountability before the fans' court.

Three barriers that cannot be skipped

The first barrier is usability. The fan queuing for a ticket outside the Rajshahi gate has a smartphone, but no patience for digital wallets, fees, or seed phrases. A technology that requires learning technology first pushes the ordinary fan away. The second is volatility. Fan-token prices swing — sometimes sky-high, sometimes in the mud — and then a gambling table sits between the fan and the game, the exact opposite of fan ritual. The third, and most important: blockchain does not cure corruption; it only keeps a witness to transactions. If someone moves money before it enters the ledger, or writes a player's contract in two halves, the world's best blockchain can do nothing.

The stadium — the true address of fan ritual is the stand, not an app's wallet. (— Root: Sociology of Fan Rituals | Scenario: Analysis of fan behavior and tradition.) At Russia 2026 I watched Japan's fans; after losing, 200 of them cleaned their section for 20 minutes. No technology was there, only a sense of responsibility. In 2026 in Doha I watched Morocco's fans too — nearly 5,000 people singing for three hours in Souq Waqif, while I spoke with 23 Bangladeshi migrant workers about their football lives. That experience taught me that a fan's pull can never be measured by a balance sheet alone. Blockchain, too, is really a digital version of that responsibility — a culture of keeping the account clean.

What signal to watch next

I do not want to prophesy; I want to watch signals. Over the next two or three seasons I will track: whether a board or franchise launches a genuine ticketing or payment pilot, and whether its ledger can be independently verified; whether a fan token leans more on voting power than on price; and, most important, whether a young player can verify his own contract terms and payment himself. That day is the real test.

Technology has handed us an honest ledger. Whether we keep it open, or again seat one person alone to write the account, is not a technology question — it is our decision. In the Rajshahi stands, those who wait until the last ball ask a simple thing: who is writing the account, and who is verifying it? The day everyone can write and read it together, cricket's inner ledger will no longer belong to anyone alone.