Tamper tags applied at the signing, so resale buyers can check a signed bat
TL;DR Crestmark puts a tamper-evident NFC tag on a cricket bat, jersey or ball the moment a player signs it, at an event run with the athlete's agency or franchise. Each later sale is added to an append-only ownership record. Rights holders pay per tagged item, and resale buyers can check any item free on their phone.
Fake autographs are now a court matter in India. In December 2025 the Delhi High Court ordered fake Sunil Gavaskar merchandise off the internet. His suit said fake autographed items and photographs were being sold to buyers online[1]. In July 2026 the same court ordered two large marketplaces and a social media company to take down listings misusing Yuvraj Singh's name within 36 hours[2], and Gautam Gambhir won similar protection in March[3].
So what does a buyer have to go on today? A paper certificate and a photo of the signing, which is what auction houses tell buyers to ask for[4]. Both are easy to forge.
What it does, in regulatory terms: an authentication and record-keeping service for physical goods. It issues no token, sells no fractional shares and makes no claim about investment value. That keeps it outside crypto-asset rules.
A Crestmark staffer attends the signing. Straight after each signature, the item gets an NFC chip label whose circuit breaks if anyone peels it off. These chips produce a fresh cryptographic code on every tap, so a copied code fails[5]. Every item gets a photo and a video clip, and the player's agency confirms the batch. A buyer taps the tag with a phone and sees the event, the date and the number of times the item has changed hands. Personal details stay hidden.
When an item is sold, the seller hands over the record and the buyer accepts it. A fingerprint of each day's records is written to a public blockchain, so nobody, including Crestmark, can quietly rewrite the history. The seed asked for AI-driven provenance for art. I dropped both the art and the AI, because a witness at the signing proves more than any model can.
Athletes' agencies, franchises and licensed merchandise sellers pay a per-item fee for tagged signings, since a provable signature raises their prices. Auction houses and resale marketplaces can pay to show a "verified" badge. Buyers check items free and pay a small fee to log a transfer. And signed cricket items are not cheap - in a 2021 Dubai auction of digital rights, a bat signed by the 2011 World Cup team fetched US$25,000 (about ₹24 L)[6].
Courts are now treating a player's signature as protected. The Gavaskar, Gambhir and Yuvraj orders all fall between December 2025 and July 2026[1][2][3], and they make agencies more willing to police signed goods. Tamper-loop NFC chips have also become cheap, at €0.49 (about ₹53) each in volume[7].
There is no public figure for India's signed-memorabilia resale market. The firmest signals are prices - a 2021 cricket auction totalled US$335,950 (about ₹3.25 Cr) across ten-odd lots[8]. For adjacent context, the US Operation Bullpen investigation estimated in 2000 that 50–90% of memorabilia on sale was fake[9]. That number is old and American, not an Indian measure.
One US firm sends authenticators to signings and ties holographic labels to blockchain records[10]. Big American grading companies run witnessed signings with serial stickers, mostly for American sports. One cricket platform ran auctions in 2021, but it sold digital rights rather than checking physical items[8]. I found no Indian service that witnesses cricket signings and keeps a resale record. That is the gap.
| Difficulty | Moderate (46/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.15 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The technology is off the shelf. The hard part is access - you need agencies and franchises to let your staff into signings and sign off every batch. Without that you're just one more certificate seller, and there are plenty of those already. Tagging curved bats and washable jerseys without spoiling them also takes real testing.
No sector licence covers authenticating signed goods, but athlete permissions and data rules decide whether you can operate at all.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI judge whether a signature is genuine. The whole point of Crestmark is a human witness at the signing, and a model guessing from a photo undoes that.
Want to work out the AI layer for Crestmark? Talk to Yash →
I think this suits a founder with friends in cricket management or merchandising, not a blockchain engineer looking for a use case. The chain is the cheapest part. Before raising money, prove one thing - that two player agencies or one franchise will let you tag a season's signings and pay for it.
Plan for roughly ₹60 L–1.15 Cr, most of it on staff for signing events, tags and the verification app.
There's no sector licence, but you need a written licence from each athlete or agency to use their name, plus DPDP compliance for owner data. Keep the record non-tradable so crypto rules don't apply.
Yes. Witnessed signings already work in the US. Check local personality-rights and consumer law, and find a sport where you can get access to athletes.
The free Crestmark validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the personality-rights and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for agencies and collectors, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Crestmark or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting athlete agencies to let your witnesses into their signings, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.