Sorare — SO5 Summer Media League: How to Play, Prizes & Strategies!
Put your football knowledge to the test this summer and compete for weekly ETH and Unique Player Cards in a new Sorare SO5 Tournament!
Whilst fans of club football might be recharging their batteries and counting the days until the first domestic games of next season, there is an incredible amount of football scheduled in June and July.
We have just seen Portugal crowned the Nations League Champions, the Women’s World Cup is on, and over the coming days and weeks we’ve got the Copa America, Africa Cup of Nations and Gold Cup to look forward to.
So, when you combine this with the crazy volume of summer transfer rumours and globe trotting pre-season friendlies, there is just no-way you will be able to avoid football in the media!
Introducing — SO5 Summer Media League
After the huge success of the SO5 Master League (Fantasy Football game where players score points based on their on-pitch performance) comes the introduction of the SO5 Media League.
The Media League picks up from where the Master League left off with the only difference being that your players now score points based on their activity off the pitch!
This ingenious concept has allowed Sorare to expand beyond the core beta-testers that have assisted with the games development to date and increase the number of users playing ahead of their public launch which is scheduled for the fall of this year.
How to Play
When you are logged into your account, click on the Gaming Arena tab and press the ‘Compose A Team’ button. This screen also confirms the deadline to compose your team (23.30 CET displayed in your local time), and allows you to scroll back through previous game weeks by clicking on the date.
Creating teams is easy — you just have to click on the blank card boxes and your eligible players for that position show up on the left hand side. Click on the player you want to include and they will appear on your team. The tournaments that your team is eligible for will show/disappear on the top-right of your screen depending on the scarcity of cards you select.
Once you have filled all 5 player spots, choose your captain by clicking on the star under their name. You can also add a memorable or funny team name (which will help you stand out further on the leaderboards!) before you submit.
That really is it. The points (see below) will be calculated for you every Monday, and you will receive an email notification to prompt you to check your results to see how you’ve done!
SO5 Media League — Rules & Point Scoring
Players will score points whenever they are mentioned or spotted in any of the following 4 Media Sources.
https://twitter.com/JPLeagueFR
https://twitter.com/premierleague
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/gossip
The 4 media sources were carefully selected to give balance to the players in the database being used in beta testing.
It was felt that the BBC Gossip column would provide a credible source for global rumours with West Ham being represented fairly in amongst the English related news. To support this, we’d get content directly from the Premier League twitter account with official news about West Ham and their players.
For the Belgian teams, the best daily source to match the BBC was deemed as Walfoot.be and the Jupiler League twitter account was selected as the Premier League equivalent to give impartial coverage to all the teams in the league.
How do Players Score Points?
Points are awarded as follows:
- Image or Mention = 1 point
- Transfer Rumour = 2 points
- Transfer Confirmation = 3 points
A player can receive multiple image points but will only receive 1 point for multiple mentions. If the media link or article contains a video, then a player will also receive 1 point if they can be identified in the clip.
Bonus Multipliers for Card Scarcity
Carrying forward from the SO5 Master League, your players card scarcity and XP level will then give you the all important bonus multipliers for the points they get.
As a reminder Rare cards have a base multiplier of 2.5x, Super Rare cards give 7.5x and Unique cards give a 25x base multiplier to your players point scores.
On top of this your players XP will increase this by 0.1 per level and your choice of captain also add 1.0 to their base multiplier.
Each game week also offers you the opportunity to build up your players XP with 100 XP points awarded each week to Rare cards, 125 XP points to Super Rares and 200 points to Uniques.
Using an example from Game Week 1 — this tweet by Walfoot gave Guillermo Ochoa 3 points (2 for transfer rumour + 1 for the main image). Mehdi Carcela also benefits from being in the main image and received 1 point.
So, owners of a Rare card version of Ochoa received 7.5 points + their XP bonus. The Super Rare owners got 22.5 points and the Unique owner, 75 points. If he was selected as captain, then he would’ve got an additional 3 points.
In Week 1 there were over 300 Media articles involving the players in the Sorare database and the Tournament Leagues produced 3 different winners.
SO5 Media League — Prizes
Each week offers the opportunity to win valuable new cards as well as up to 1 ETH in prize money!
Monthly Winner
(Highest weekly score of the month)
- 1 Unique Card
Weekly All-Star Leaderboard
(Best game week score — all Player Cards eligible)
- 2 Super Rare Cards + 0.3 ETH
- 5 Rare Cards + 0.2 ETH
- 3 Rare Cards
Weekly Super Rare Leaderboard
(Best game week score — minimum 1 Super Rare Player Card — no Uniques allowed!)
- 1 Super Rare Card + 0.2 ETH
- 2 Rare Cards + 0.1 ETH
Weekly Rare Leaderboard
(Best game week score — for all Rare Player Card teams only)
- 1 Super Rare Card + 0.15 ETH
- 2 Rare Cards + 0.05 ETH
The monthly Unique player card prizes will be awarded to whoever achieves the highest weekly score of the month — which means you are not at a disadvantage if you join mid-month (nice idea!)
SO5 Media League — Strategies
Here are a few ideas that might help you with your player and team selections!
Transfer Rumours
This is the obvious one and we are already seeing repeat media headlines and articles for players linked with high profile moves this summer. Trossard, Wesley and Samatta have already been linked with moves to the Premier League, and for each story that links them to a new club, you’ll get a minimum of 3 easy base points.
If you can assemble a team of players that feature in long, protracted contract or transfer talks then you will be unlucky not to be competing at the top of the leaderboards and winning prizes.
I’m personally hoping Declan Rice remains linked to Manchester United all summer (and then stays at West Ham) 😊
Contract Renewals
Don’t overlook player loyalty either this summer. For every transfer, there will almost certainly be a player committing their future to a club.
Week 1 saw some incredible lists of players that were being retained and released from their contracts.
These might not provide you with as many points as a rumour, but the days leading into and just after a new contract signing will give you a nice injection of points to your team.
So, it doesn’t matter if a player is on the move or staying… as long as it is deemed news worthy!
Internationals
In the first week, as expected, news relating to the Nations League featured daily.
Early in week 2 and we are now seeing mentions for players getting called up for international duty in the Africa Cup of Nations and Euro U21’s.
We expect to see this continue with similar articles for those involved in the Copa America and Gold Cup.
The international call ups are just the tip of the iceberg though. If your players get selected, you’ve got a chance of them featuring in images, post-match interviews, even just a footnote mention as part of the squad — so, right now, having a team of players that will represent their country this summer is proving very popular.
Pre-season
Whilst some players might be on International duty (or recovering from), others will be back at pre-season training. I think it’s fair to assume you will get the cameras out snapping training sessions, new faces and then providing coverage of the games.
This might be a great chance to build a side team of younger talent and lesser known names that might steal the limelight in a week where the teams international players are on an extended break.
Marquee Players
Most of the top point scoring players so far seem to have one thing in common — they are generally considered fan favourites within their teams.
This is the time of year teams have kit launches and promotions, and the higher profile players are used in all their clubs advertising to sell themselves to international fan bases.
If you’ve got the games poster boy(s) in your team, chances are they’ll show up in images more often than their team-mates.
SO5 Media League — Summary
For me, the SO5 Media League allows new players to join and compete against those that have been involved in the beta-testing with a minimal learning curve.
If you have a passion and a basic knowledge of football, you can build an exciting squad this summer to compete for the games top prizes as well as positioning yourself nicely for when Sorare goes public in a few months.
The simplistic beauty of the rules allows for different week to week strategies and gives you the bonus of building up XP that will be invaluable for the start of next seasons SO5 Master Leagues.
So, what are you waiting for?
