Football finds alt-finance: can GPE locate leisure?

This commentary calls for GPE to reconsider its neglect of leisure. It traces growing overlaps between leisure and digital economies through the case of fintech in men’s elite football, focusing on the growing issuance of blockchain-based digital tokens by clubs and leagues worldwide since 2018. The fan token example is used to illustrate how locating seemingly esoteric developments more widely in digitisation trends politicises leisure activities. It suggests that a focus on infrastructuring and governing in particular may help draw attention to the politics of contemporary transnational activities that blur the boundaries between sectors as well as work/leisure in the digital age.