With each passing week and major announcement, Sorare is catching the attention of more and more ‘fantasy football’ managers.
Having enjoyed some great initial chats on Twitter with curious onlookers from the Football Index and Footstock communities, I thought it would be good to document some of the main talking points we’ve chatted about for the benefit of others.
I’m a former investor on Football Index, but have not played Footstock (just followed their progress) and my aim with this blog-post is not to convince anyone that one platform is better than the other, its to help share more insight to those that have yet to discover Sorare so they can make a better informed decision as to whether it might be something worth diversifying into.
Introduction to Sorare — Tips for Beginners
I think from all the recent DM’s received, the most popular request is for tips to get started. Having played Sorare since day 1, I’m confident I’ve got a good grasp of all the different game play elements and strategies, but for the purpose of these articles, I want to keep my advice generic and then I’m happy to delve deeper in a future article(s).
Over 2 blog posts I’ll cover the following:
- Understand the differences between the Games (below)
- What should I do first? (below)
- What Impacts the Value the Sorare Player Cards? (part 2)
How does Sorare differ from Football Index and Footstock?
As I’ve started out in most one on one conversations, before jumping into Sorare, I’d recommend getting your head into how each platform differs from each other to ensure that your motivations as a gamer or investor are likely to be achievable from within.
For me, in their purest forms, I would generalise FI as betting on fantasy football, FS as gambling on fantasy football and Sorare as traditional Fantasy Football that utilises licensed collectibles.
When you scratch the surface of all 3, you of course uncover more depth and complexity that attract much wider cross sections of users.
In Sorare, I believe the following could get overlooked if you only give it a quick glance:
The value of true ownership — Without wishing to dwell on the negatives (more to labour a point), if the company behind any football game you enjoy disappears tomorrow, you are almost certainly going to lose all the progress you’ve made and any value you’ve accumulated.
If Electronic Arts falls by the wayside, no more FIFA. If there is no more FI then what value will player contracts have? Without FS, I am guessing the cards people own would be rendered obsolete.
Now in the equally unlikely event that Sorare was to disappear tomorrow, one of the main benefits I value is the fact that I have full control and ownership of the player cards I own.
With each player card purchase I am creating my own digital scrapbook in a similar way to when I collected Panini stickers in the 80’s to do as I please with. I can store these on a wallet of my choice and decide to leave them in or live outside of the Sorare ecosystem.
We can debate what value the cards may or may not have a different time but like baseball cards, basketball cards and traditional football stickers over the years, there will undoubtedly be a market for licensed collectibles.
That is what you are essentially buying when you buy a Sorare card. Something you truly own and that can not be taken from you.
The value and pull of the league/club licenses — I don’t think I need to go into too much detail on this, but the compound affect of each new league and club license that Sorare obtains (76 teams and counting in 18 months) helps create a huge gap to close between them and anyone else that is potentially considering to enter into the same space.
Sorare are already considered as the leading player when it comes to football on the blockchain and have confirmed that they are different stages of negotiation with every major Top 20 league and team in the world.
After a new team or league have created a partnership with Sorare, their marketing reach helps to attract both local and global fans to the game who we all end up competing with at auction for their cards (another strong example as to why cards have/retain consistent underlying values).
The perpetual utility value of cards — There are many reasons why fans/collectors/investors/gamers buy Sorare cards. You will have your reasons and there will no doubt be others who feel the same way as you.
For those new to joining, the most obvious initial lure is the fact you can use your cards to compete in Fantasy Football tournaments which now pay out over 50 ETH / €10,000 of prizes each week.
The flagship SO5 twice weekly tournaments are free to enter (assuming you have bought eligible cards to play with) meaning you will never put at risk anything you have bought or have to pay an entry fee.
Sorare use Opta as their data provider which allows players from all of the world’s main leagues to be scored and as cards never expire and become worthless at the end of the season, you can continue to use them over and over and over again.
Let that sink in for a moment. No more having to go and buy the latest copy of a game just to get the season updates. No expiration on a player contract you own.
If you buy Matthijs De Ligt today at auction or from another manager, he could quite conceivably be used for 15 years in Fantasy Football tournaments and you would be under no pressure to buy another version of him if you didn’t want to.
Collector appeal — Touched on briefly but just to share a bit more, believe it or not there are managers playing Sorare right now whose primary motivation is not to play SO5. They are here to collect.
With Sorare producing a finite amount of cards per player each season, there can only be one Unique. There can also only ever be a first edition 1/100 Rare or 1/10 Super Rare of each player each season. This isn’t like opening packs on FUT or going to every newsagent in the UK to open stickers until you get the player of your dreams.
Collectors have and will shatter the dreams of gamers that work to sensible budgets. You will often see sales prices that you can’t get your head around and player cards you’d love to own but are sat with fans/collectors that have no intention of selling.
I love this variable in the game. You see occasional error cards and short-prints which can have little or no utility value but to a collector, there will be an appeal and when collectors and gamers do battle at auction, you get some very interesting outcomes!
Day 1 on Sorare — What should I do first?!
18 months on and there is a whole host of information, opinions and community driven content to help you get into Sorare. My recommendation is that you submerse yourself into it and integrate with the growing communities.
The most popular online Sorare community is on Discord which is home to over 1500 managers. Here you can get to chat in multiple languages about every aspect of the game and reach out directly to fellow managers to initiate trade negotiations.
We’ve recently seen the emergence of some great 3rd party sites and I know there are many more being worked on. For those into stats, I can highly recommend you to bookmark and join Sorare Data where you will find all sorts of great content designed to help you make better informed buying decisions.
Another experienced veteran manager (PAP) has created a great series of video tutorials which you can only benefit from taking the time to watch.
There are lots of ways to acquire help and knowledge before making your first moves in the transfer market. Enjoy the learning process and getting to know some of the fellow managers along the way!
End of Part 1
Hopefully this brief overview has been a useful read. In my next article, I’ll specifically cover off the following:
If you’d like me to share my thoughts on anything else, drop me a DM on Twitter with the topic or question you have or find me in the Sorare Discord channel to discuss.
https://twitter.com/blockchainYNWA
__
Ready to compete for weekly ETH & the games best player card prizes?
