Ok, the crypto stuff is heavy going I know but I think it is crucial to understand that before you can really understand the game itself. Let’s look at that now!

I’m not going to cover how the game works in general, because that is all set out here in Sorare’s FAQ. If you have no idea about Sorare, it is probably a good idea to read that first. I’ll be focusing on the differences with FI and how we would need to adapt our game (or not).

23+ Leagues

The first thing we’ll notice is that we now have far more leagues to cover. 23 of them, currently, with plans for far more to come. 

In focus groups, FI were constantly told “I would join FI, but I only know about the EPL and having to know about the other 4 leagues is too much work”. So, this barrier is even bigger on Sorare.

But we have to understand here that this is a global game, and not just for the UK market. 

So it’s entirely sensible for Sorare to cover a lot of leagues. And they need to cover a lot of ground so that they can mint enough cards to give people a lot of options.

This is… mixed I guess. On the one hand, I can see how it is fun to dig out an obscure Belgian league player and win. (Interestingly, Vanaken, one of my site favourites from Europa League scouting on FI who had success for us, is a cult figure on Sorare! It is nice to see that the legend of Vanaken will live on if FI does not make it). 

Certainly, if like me you will be joining to win and get the best possible value… we are just never going to be doing that by picking Neymar, Kimmich or Mbappé. We will, as things stand anyway, have to do it by going for less popular players, often outside of the big 5 Leagues. 

The game makes no distinction for the importance of the match. Messi can smash in a hatrick to seal the title in La Liga, or I could score 3 against the Dad’s at the local 5-a-side league. If I was in the game, that would count for the same points.

So for some, this creates problems. Is that sporting or particularly fair? Of course it is not. Those are not comparable sporting feats, however much I might want to think they are. And, do we want to have to care what is going on in the Belgian League or J-League? For many from an FI audience, the answer is they don’t.

There is no reason why Sorare has to attract all FI customers of course! Globally, they will probably find enough people to fill the game and then some.

Personally, I would consider playing both types of games. I would enjoy winkling out some obscure players, assembling a relatively cheap but competitive squad and using it to beat up people who are buying more conventional and expensive cards. I might enjoy that a lot, in fact.

But it will be a different experience from cheering on our usual heroes from the big 5 European Leagues. This is neither good nor bad, it is just different and it is really just about personal taste. I’d like this. but I would do this alongside FI ideally, rather than as a replacement.

The Scoring System

Here is where we are on more familiar ground. 

Like almost any digital football game players get points for various actions. Some of them do more good things than others, and they get more points. 

Once I had spent a little time adjusting to a few of the quirks, the thousands of hours of experience in scouting players across a range of international leagues I have developed over the years? That can very much be brought to bear here right off the bat. 

So if you feel like you can pick a player on FI, I really do not think you will have much trouble adjusting to Sorare’s system. And all this experience would likely be a huge advantage over a new player who is only using Sorare as their first platform.

It’s still goals and assists heavy just like FI. But also with a lot of points for baseline actions. This is very familiar. And it is absolutely no accident that our brothers and sisters on Sorare discovered the points magnet that is Vanaken just as we did.

A major difference is that there are no points for the team winning or minus points for them losing. So again, this widens the net and brings a lot more players into regular contention. We’ll be looking outside of the big teams more often than we would on FI. Again, some will see more variety as good. Others will not want to be assessing the strengths of mid-table Chinese Super League players too often.

But again, the tougher this is and the more obscure, the more space there is for good players to fly under the radar. And again, much as we can on FI and possibly more so, we’ll be able to exploit the fact that most people do their analysis based purely on historic data in various tools. 

By focusing instead on match data and what is statistically likely to happen in future games, rather than what happened in recent games, we would be able to utilise the same edge that benefited us on FI.

However, this is a genuine accessibility point. A lot of people just will not have the time to scour multiple leagues like this. I could do it on FI but only because people paid me to do the heavy lifting for them. A normal human with a normal job? It will be very difficult to find the best value around without investing an enormous amount of time in doing so. 

The shortcut of using historic data tools displaying average scores across recent games for example just does not compete with good analysis. Yet this method seems to be very commonly used in the game. 

So on the one hand – there is huge scope for a dedicated person to exploit value here. On the other, doing that right takes a lot of time, effort and experience.

Value and Winning

Every market has its own quirks. 

On FI we are generally familiar, at least on this site, with the concept of a “rational” or “true” value. 

And we also know that hype, desirability and general sentiment can play havoc with prices too. We are well used to dealing with things other than performance that impact value. Age. National team. And yes even just that X factor that makes people want to hold a player “just because”.

But on Sorare, it seems much, much harder to peg a player to a rational value based on what cards you might win. Even if you can reliably beat other players, the card prizes at least are randomised. I cannot currently assess these odds, it may be possible, but it would be a significant feat. (If anyone has ever tried to do this, I’d be fascinated to see it please DM me!).

If you finish in a high position in the division, you get a chance of winning a rare, super rare, or even unique card which could result in a major jackpot with prices the way they are right now.

However, users I have spoken to report this is currently very difficult to achieve. This is tough for new entrants because it is just inescapable that the original users hold all the best cards already and just have a higher chance of winning. 

So, even a good player joining now making the best possible value selections is in probability terms unlikely to catch them up. It is more likely in fact that anyone holding good and expensive cards will win even more good cards and get even further ahead, even if they aren’t all that great at the game. 

If I pick great players at the entry price point, perhaps trying to assemble a team for £1,000 to £2,000 say, I will have to work very, very hard and show exceptional skill to beat an early adopter or someone with a bigger budget. This is a game where you can pay to win, even if you are a bad player. 

This gap increases once people start to introduce Super Rare and Unique cards that give a potential 20-40% advantage. So my selections may have to be 20-40% better just to match them! There are mechanisms, through the Leagues, that keep such high rollers away from the majority. 

But overall, this is not a game where we can necessarily expect the best managers to be at the top on merit. And I don’t like this at all. But it is just fundamental to the way it is currently set up and many people with a competitive mindset will not like this. 

This could be fixable though – I don’t think many will begrudge early adopters for reaping the rewards from the risk they took in going early. But new players need to be able to compete more fairly amongst players of reasonably equal financial muscle – with enough prizes on offer that they can dream of moving up and one day competing with the high rollers.

This has a comparison to FI. A £10,000 portfolio holder never expected to compete with a £100,000 portfolio holder for overall gains in cash terms. But we could beat them in % terms and get a better reward through higher skill. So some form of “catch up mechanic” where a lower value manager has a credible shot at big rewards for demonstrating consistent skill could be a winner.

There is, interestingly, a “threshold” prize. You can win a small amount of Eth provided your team makes it over a scoring threshold. But we are talking perhaps £10 to £25 right now depending on the price of Eth (and that is near a current All Time High). 

So here, there might be scope for a fun low stakes game where we attempt to assemble a very cheap team or a few teams that can make that worth it. We could win more than once, racking up a few £25 wins for example. But even then it is not quite the big bucks many are used to playing for on FI.

This will primarily work for cards that have little desirability beyond the ability to win. No name players that you’d only ever hold if they could score big for you in tournaments.

For Mbappé? Haaland? Good luck getting good value on those cards. Because the value will not be rational in a traditional sense. Particularly for the Unique and Super Rare cards.

See, on FI, Haaland could have a million shares. And we never hit a point where scarcity ever really became a major factor. The price therefore settles around the average the traders, as a collective, were willing to pay.

But what if there is only 1 share in Haaland? On Sorare each season only has 1 Unique Haaland card. This price is not dictated by his rational value, or even by the average person’s perception of value. 

This price is set by that one person, in the entire world, who is the most desperate or enthusiastic and wealthy enough to bid a sum that would seem ludicrous to most. This is how Ronaldo’s Unique card can sell for €289,920.

And because these “collectors” exist, who are not playing to win but are involved for the prestige of owning the big names, a value trader playing to win is never going to be competing with them for popular cards.

So, if the enjoyment of watching and holding big stars is the game as we did on FI… it would not seem rational to hold your favourite players if your goal is maximising returns. On FI, you could often both rationally hold a favourite player and win with them.

You could however argue that you want to keep your big name cards, not so much to win, but because you believe they will only become more collectible in future. But then, this is a very long term bet and more about collecting. It isn’t the week in week out trading around form and fixtures we would be used to on FI.

I could get on board here with finding “hidden gems” from lower leagues that I can use to beat people holding big and expensive cards. That’s a fun pursuit. 

What I really struggle with though is the sporting unfairness – the fact that someone with more money in the game than me can beat me for that reason alone, even if he plays fairly badly and I play well.

It is worth noting that Sorare plan to introduce (“mint”) more new cards in the near future, possibly introducing a whole new class of cards beneath “Rare” that should be cheaper. However, they will also be less competitive than the Rare cards. This might release some pressure and lower prices a little, as supply is increased. 

But I am not convinced it will fully solve this “competitiveness” problem – this is baked in to drive more and more purchasing of higher value cards for commercial reasons. 

So it gives the Sorare team a real dilemma – they need to make money – and nobody should begrudge them that. 

But how do you create an ecosystem that both drives the purchasing of high value cards whilst allowing lower stakes players to feel like they are competing? Is that even possible? Do they even need it to be accessible to everyone if globally there are enough wealthy people to fund the game?

There is already growing frustration in the Sorare community about these issues. 

Sorare could start raining prizes down on players as a short term solution – but as we know from FI – this can eventually put the business in a precarious situation should tougher times hit, new customers stop joining and existing customers stop trading. 

It’s easy to give more prizes and everyone will cheer. But once you give, it is very, very hard to take anything away without disappointing customers. This is the spiral that got FI in such hot water.

It’s a huge challenge for Sorare to get this right.