Sorare — Atlético Madrid, Valencia CF, Schalke 04: Chapter 2 has officially begun!
Two weeks ago, Sorare announced that a ‘New wave of teams’ would be joining their platform and an exclusive pre-sale of Schalke 04 ‘First Edition’ player cards shortly followed.
Today, La Liga giants Atlético Madrid and Valencia CF have now also been officially welcomed to the game with similar pre-sales of ‘First Edition’ player cards now showing on the Sorare Transfer Market!
The size and stature of these 3 clubs alone brings a serious ‘who’s who’ of global footballing talent including: Amine Harit (Morocco), Weston McKennie (USA), Dani Parejo and José Gayà (Spain), Jan Oblak (Slovenia) and 2019 Golden Boy winner João Félix (Portugal).
Summary of Recent Changes to the Sorare Platform
Improvements and additions to the platform seem to be as frequent these days as Liverpool fixtures and we’ve enjoyed some major UI updates over the last few weeks including:
Ability to Buy Player Cards with Credit/Debit Card
An obstacle often associated with blockchain games is that you are required to buy in-game assets with crypto-currency which can often quickly lead to a saturation point of gamers that have the desire and/or ability to play this way.
Fortunately, thanks to a recent update, if you love Fantasy Football but don’t wish to transact in Ethereum, then you are in luck. You can now buy New Player Cards on the transfer market (individually or in packs) as well as from other managers using real-world currency.
Bidding at auction or buying immediately is now possible using a Credit/Debit card and we have already started to see the benefit of this with fans of the clubs in the game that perhaps aren’t au-fait with crypto now getting involved.
Direct Offers / Trades
Sorare Managers can now make direct offers to fellow managers on any player card they are interested in.
You can make the following types of offers:
- Straight ETH offers
- ETH + Player(s) for Player(s)
Having previously only had the ability to list a player on the transfer market, Direct Offers allow for so many more types of negotiation now between managers.
We’ve already seen a large number of high profile transfers and trades made securely using escrow that were simply not possible previously (unless there was implicit trust between the managers involved).
With transfers being an integral part of real-life football, it will be interesting to see what other options might open up in the future. I’d personally love to see an official way to loan surplus cards to other managers for a pre-agreed or weekly fee.
Adding an International Tournament to the road map!
Over the 3 International breaks in September, October and November, the Discord community have enjoyed playing a side-game using a simplified version of the main games SO5 scoring using Player Cards that represented their national teams.
Following the third and final game weekend just gone, the overwhelming conclusion was that an ‘International SO5’ needs to find its way onto the platform and become part of the Sorare calendar whenever there is a break in domestic fixtures.
Whether or not this is implemented before the next international fixtures in March or perhaps more realistically for Euro 2020 in June, the interest in this has convinced me there is going to be yet another valuable utility to Player Cards of those that turn out for their country on a regular basis.
What’s next for Sorare?
The developers recent comments have suggested we can expect a continuation of more high profile clubs being welcomed to the platform coupled with further improvements to the gaming arena specifically designed to help new managers successfully compete as soon as they join.
I assume these in turn will trigger the need for more weekly auctions and tournaments (U21 — Division 3 started last week) which can only mean more intense competition for the games best prizes!
The incremental improvements have culminated to give the game a feel that has come on such a long way since the early beta testing months, and alongside many others, I’m really excited to learn what Sorare have planned in this next growth phase.
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Ready to compete for weekly ETH & the games best player card prizes?
