European football fans have had to put up with a lot lately, enduring ballooning ticket and streaming prices and, in many cases, pandemic-induced empty stadiums. How do beloved clubs repay their loyal supporters for sacrificing time, money, and attention just as these things seem scarcer than ever?

By selling fans snake oil by the fifty-five-gallon drum. Football’s latest rip-off is a wave of initiatives pushing cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based products. We’re already seeing a boom in crypto club partnerships, “fan tokens,” and players and coaches promoting NFTs — and it looks like this is just the beginning. And while the digital-token-based web3, touted as the future of the internet, may seem like an odd fit for a 150-year-old sport, it should come as no surprise that it’s latched onto football. For years, the sport has been a laboratory for stupendously shady financialization — and a dumping ground for oligarchic investors looking to launder money and reputations.