Founded in 2018, Sorare is a global fantasy football (soccer) game, where players manage a virtual team with digital player cards, which they buy, sell, and trade. The digital cards are NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. In short, NFTs are unique digital assets. All cards are officially licensed and around 200 clubs are present in the game.
The game uses blockchain technology based on Ethereum. Each digital card is registered as a unique token on the Ethereum blockchain. Transactions are all recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. The use of blockchain technology means that the digital cards have provable rarity and scarcity. Thanks to the blockchain, cards cannot be altered, duplicated, or deleted and their supply is limited. Each card is unique and owned personally by one player. The card’s value appreciates and depreciates based on its market value.
Every game week, players assemble a team of 5 cards and earn points depending on the performance of players in real life football matches. For tournaments to take place, there needs to be football games scheduled in real-life. There are two tournaments per week. Cards earn XP points that make them more powerful in the game and allow the player to complete in higher divisions to win bigger prizes.
So, what’s the hype around NFTs? NFTs were created in 2013-2014 from people wanting to trade assets and collectibles on the blockchain. The NFT space gathered attention when CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties came out in 2017, and people started earning large sums of money from flipping them. NFTs quieted down from then until 2021. Their return to stardom can be explained by Bitcoin’s 3x rise in price to all-time highs in 2021, a growing digital collectibles market that surged during COVID (NFTs solved the problem of scarcity, allowing creators to price, publish, and sell their work), content creators’ interest in decentralized monetization of digital content, emergence of NBA Top Shot (#1 source of NFT volume), and mass attention towards future technologies Metaverse and Web 3.0.
Sorare is the #1 platform for fantasy football and football collector cards. What makes Sorare unique is that it has partnered with around 200 football organizations, including some of the most famous clubs in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Liverpool, and Juventus. Sorare is funded by a world-class team including footballers Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann and Rio Ferdinand. Collect cards, compete against a large and quickly growing global player pool of 600,000 registered users, and win prizes!
Sorare collaborates with Major League Baseball.
“We’re thrilled to share that we’ve partnered with Major League Baseball (MLB) and MLB Players, Inc. to bring you the first Major League Baseball NFT-based free-to-play game this summer.”
“This is a significant milestone for Sorare, as we continue to extend our product line so that more sports fans across the world may fully own the game they love. The Sorare MLB NFT game will bring a new method of connecting with baseball, allowing the league to engage new fans around the world while also introducing existing baseball fans to Sorare’s 1.8 million registered users in 185 countries.”
Baseball.TeamSorare officially launched to support the MLB Sorare project.
Common cards are given to players after completing the onboarding process and successfully launching their Sorare managerial career. There’s an infinite number of common cards, and they don’t exist on the blockchain, meaning they can’t be bought, sold, or traded.
Sorare is built around the idea of collecting cards that have both a certain rarity and scarcity in the game. This means some cards will be worth more than others. For the 2021-22 season, four levels of scarcity exist for each Sorare Card:
LIMITED (Yellow) – 1,000 cards created each season
RARE (Red) – 100 cards created each season
SUPER RARE (Blue) – 10 cards created each season
UNIQUE (Black / Brown) – 1 card created each season
Sorare had card sales volume of over $150M (€125M) since January 2021 across 170 countries. It is funded by a world-class team including Benchmark, Accel Partners, Headline, footballers Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann and Rio Ferdinand. The platform has partnered with around 200 top football clubs, including Juventus, Real Madrid, and Liverpool. Sorare has raised a total of $739.2 million and its latest valuation is $4.3 billion.
With 600,000 registered users and 150,000 monthly active users, the user base is already quite big, but there’s potential for even more growth. Sales have grown by 51x between the second quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021.
Every game week, players assemble a team of five cards and earn points depending on the performance of football players in real life football matches. There are two tournaments per week. Cards earn XP points that make them more powerful in the game and allow players to compete in higher divisions to win better prizes. Sorare has Global and Regional league structures. Each league has five divisions. The 5 Divisions in each League structure have entry criteria based on card eligibility. This ensures the game is competitive for managers. Prizes (ETH and cards) are announced every week. The number of prizes vary every week, as they depend on the number of licenses players playing in Game Week.
The worth of NFT collector cards are based on its market value or how much other players are willing to pay for them. The rarer the card, the more expensive it should be. Also, how in-demand a certain football player will be reflected on the price of his card. Collector cards are not only for use in Sorare, but they can also be used outside of the platform in other games.
Trading collector cards is like trading any other asset. To trade Sorare cards, managers must find an appealing deal, whether on Sorare, forums, or other internet resources, negotiate the deal and execute the deal. If players want to swap cards or create an exchange using two, three, or more different cards, they will need to use the Direct Offers tool in Sorare. Deals can be finance with a combination of cards or cryptocurrency.
Players have two options to buy cards. They can either buy:
New Cards: they are available to buy in the New Signings through auctions. They are issued by Sorare. You can buy single cards or a bundle of cards.
Existing Cards: they are available to buy in the Transfer Market. They are owned by other Managers and were previously issued by Sorare.
Players buy cards either through the cryptocurrency Ether or with a credit/debit card.
A possible way to make money in Sorare is by trading cards. The value of football players increases every week based on game performance. In the short run, a manager can buy a player card that they expect is going to perform well and sell it after the card rises in price after a solid performance. In the long run, scouting is involved. The manager scouts and finds a player card that is currently undervalued because they’re not playing much or haven’t reached their peak, buy that card, wait for it to grow in price, and sell it for a great return.
The most valuable NFT football cards are those that are most rare. So, in Sorare’s case that would be unique, super rare, rare, and limited cards. In that order
In March 2021, a one-of-a-kind Cristiano Ronaldo NFT sold for $290,000 on Sorare. It set two records: most expensive football card and most expensive sports NFT sale, beating NBA Top Shot Lebron James dunk moment that sold for $208,000. Before the Ronaldo card, a unique Kylian Mbappe card sold for a record 116.15 ETH or approximately $65,000.
A NFT collector card is a digital collectible that has proven ownership. In Sorare’s case, it’s an officially licensed digital collectible of a footballer for a particular season. Thanks to blockchain, NFT cards have proven scarcity or fixed supply. Sorare cards are tradable on the market and usable in games and applications outside of Sorare.
News about Sorare and Fantasy Manager with Cryptos
Sorare raises $680 million for its fantasy sports NFT game
French startup Sorare says it has raised $680 million in a Series B round of funding from SoftBank’s venture capital arm and other investors. The round valued the company at $4 billion.
The French startup said it will use the funds to develop its fantasy sports application, which enables users to create their own virtual teams with players they can trade and manage. Users can also buy and sell cards representing real-world soccer stars.
Fantasy soccer startup Sorare says NFT firms need to engage with regulators
Fantasy sports companies need to engage with regulators, and share what they are up to, according to CEO of Sorare, a blockchain-based fantasy soccer platform.
More about Sorare
EcosystemConcept
Players, as managers, compose virtual teams football players, from blockchain cards on the Sorare platform. Teams are ranked based, on the performance of their players on the real-world soccer pitch, and attributed points, just like traditional fantasy football.
Some of the cards are licensed digital collectibles . The use of blockchain technology means that the digital cards have provable scarcity.
Development
Sorare operates on Ethereum’s underlying blockchain network to secure the ownership and distribution of cards. The supply of cards is limited and cards cannot be altered, duplicated, or deleted. Each player card is represented as a non-fungible token using the ERC-721 token standard on Ethereum. Each player card is unique and is owned personally by the gamer, validated through the blockchain, allowing its value to appreciate or depreciate based on the market.
licensing partnerships Sorare signs with leagues, such as the K League and clubs such as Real Madrid, allows the Sorare cards to have the official branding with the season’s player photos and player names.
In May 2019, the company announced a pre-seed round of EUR 550k including the technology entrepreneur Xavier Niel In July 2020, the company raised 4 million with German football World Cup André Schürrle, among others.
They are also backed by UbiSoft, E-Ventures, Partech & Consensys.
In December 2020, the company raised another 3.5 million with Gerard Piqué, among others.
Clubs
As of 29th June 2021, 140 clubs are present in the game in total.
This marks an increase of over 50 additional club sides compared with that in March. A total of 30 clubs from Major League Soccer clubs are without license.
Sorare has instead signed a deal with the Major League’s Players Association, meaning portraits of every player with the kits of those teams appear in the game except the image rights of MLS and its clubs.
Jupiler Pro League has licensed Sorare.
Ecosystem
The ecosystem includes a marketplace for trading cards, where users can buy and sell cards. It also features a live matchmaking service, which matches players together in games, and a tournament system.
Marketplace
Users can trade cards between each other, either directly or via third party escrow services.
Live Matchmaking Service
A user can create a team, invite friends to join them, set up a time and place for play, then host a private match.
Tournament System
Users can enter tournaments hosted by other users, where they compete against other users’ teams.
The cards at Sorare
Sorare divides the player cards into different “scarcities”. Basically, the rarer a card is, the more valuable it is. But it is not only about the rarity. For example, you can only participate in certain leagues with certain cards. For example, if a league requires the use of 2 Super Rare cards, you need this rarity level to participate at all. So on the one hand it’s about the value a card has for other managers and on the other hand it’s about being able to participate in fantasy leagues.
Commons cards
Commons are free cards that you get when you register and that you can win in the “Casual League”. Participation in this league is free and you usually get cards of your favorite clubs. You can’t trade or sell commons cards. You can use them only for the Casual League or for the “Global All Star Division” where you can play with e.g. four Rare cards and one Commons card. Here it is important to be able to use a commons card that is as valuable as possible and for that this rarity definitely has real value.
Limited Cards
The entry level cards are definitely limited cards. These can be bought for as little as a few cents. Rarity is limited to 1000 per player per season. Limited cards are most often traded and won. However, usually far less than 1000 are issued per season and the exact number can be found e.g. at SorareData. Some players are already more valuable because there are very few cards of them in circulation. And some players can cost up to 1000 Euros. These are of course absolute top-class players, who play in the Champions League, the national team and constantly perform at the highest level. To be able to play in the limited leagues at Sorare you need five very good players including the goalkeeper. This is extremely expensive because there are very few regular goalkeepers and every manager needs one if he wants to play at the top.
Rare cards
Rare cards are the “old limited cards” because it was the entry category at the beginning. As Sorare got bigger and bigger and the demand for cards grew so much, Sorare was forced to introduce another category, Limited. That’s why you still had a very easy time getting into Sorare in early 2021 – because you could get Rare cards quite cheaply, which were worth a lot at the time.
Rare could be called the expensive entry and even pros play mainly in these leagues. Rare cards are not too rare that you can’t get them easily but expensive enough to keep the entry barrier high. This means that you will have a hard time building a Rare team for less than 1000 Euro, which can for example grab Threshold prize money in the “Global All Star Division”.
There are 100 cards per player and season.
Super Rare and Unique
Now we come to a category that is already extremely rare because there are only 10 cards per season. Super Rare is hardly affordable – at least if you want to have players who perform consistently well. With Unique there is even only one card per season and player. In this area, there are leagues that require several such cards and where you have to spend a lot of money to get in.
Most popular leagues at Sorare
Sorare combines national leagues into their own leagues. For example, the Champion Europe league consists of the German, English, Spanish, French and Italian leagues. Challenger Europe, on the other hand, consists of the other European leagues such as Portugal, Belgium, Holland, etc. Then there is an American league which includes the MLS and also an Asian league with Korea and Japan. The interesting thing is that the seasons always overlap and practically always somewhere is played twice a week – so it is never boring.
LaLiga
The Spanish League is one of the most popular in Sorare. Big clubs like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are represented – or actually all Spanish teams. There are many teams and above average number of match days so that there is always variety. There are always interesting talents from Spain, which can be scouted early at Sorare and sold at a high price at some point.
Premier League
Unfortunately, the Premier League is represented by only one club so far: Liverpool FC. And here, too, there are no limited cards for the 2021/22 season, which means that all players belong to the rare category and are correspondingly expensive. Some of them are hardly on the market or really unaffordable, especially greats like Salah or Alexander-Arnold.
Bundesliga
The Bundesliga is represented with all teams at Sorare and hopefully soon with the 2nd Bundesliga. The Bundesliga includes top clubs like FC Bayern or Borussia Dortmund. And also from the Bundesliga come again and again top talents, who later transfer to FC Bayern, Borussia Dortmund or to foreign top clubs. Examples such as Kevin DeBruyne, Timo Werner, Marc André ter Stegen, Leon Goretzka are just a few.
Trade at Sorare
The beauty of Sorare is that you can trade all cards without any fees. This means you can theoretically buy a player today for 0.01 ETH and sell it tomorrow for 0.01 ETH without making a cent loss. This is not the case with many other marketplaces and a fee is charged. That is why there is a lot of trading on Sorare. Purchased players are sold again or an injured player is replaced shortly before the closing date. All this is possible without any problems and in real time. But it is important that you know how valuable your players are. The best way to find out is to use Soraredata. Without this clue you should not buy or sell players.
What you should know about NFTs
What are NFTs?
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are digital assets that have distinct identities. They’re used to keep track of things like virtual products, tangible property, and football player cards, among other things. NFTs have been around since the early days of Bitcoin. They were first introduced in 2014 by CryptoKitties (now called Decentraland) and gained popularity after being featured on popular video games such as Fortnite and World of Warcraft.
In-Game Assets (NFT) can be used to represent items within games, including plot of land, houses, vehicles, weapons, etc., which are owned by players rather than developers. These assets may then be sold through online markets like OpenSea for real world value.
Why use NFTs?
There are several reasons why people might want to use NFTs. For example, they could be used to represent ownership of real world items, such as cars, houses, paintings, toys, and other valuable things. Or, they could be used as digital currencies. In fact, many projects already use NFTs to manage their crowdfunding campaigns.
We’ll look at how NFTs can be used to develop new financial instruments with unique properties that can’t be recreated using traditional methods in this post. We’ll also look at some of the problems that come with developing such innovative financial products. Some of the main ones are listed below:
1. Non-Fungibility
One of the most important features of NFTs is their non-fungibility. This means that each token represents one item rather than multiple items. For example, if I own 100 copies of a painting, it would be impossible to sell or transfer those paintings to someone else. With NFTs, however, I could easily sell my collection of paintings to another person.
2. Security
Due to their unique nature, NFTs make it much easier to ensure that only authorized owners can access the tokens. If an attacker manages to steal my private key, they won’t be able to take over my account or change the ownership of my NFTs.
3. Identity
Since NFTs are tied to specific accounts, they allow users to prove who owns them without having to share personal information. It’s possible to prove ownership of an asset without revealing any sensitive data.
4. Digital scarcity
Scarcity is a major factor in the success of cryptocurrencies. By creating limited supply, we can create demand for our coins and drive up prices. Due to the fact that NFTs are scarce, they can be very valuable.
5. Privacy
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, NFTs don’t require you to reveal your identity when sending funds. This makes it easy to send money anonymously.
6. Immutability
Unlike traditional currencies, NFTs aren’t subject to inflation. Since every token has its own supply, they will never become less valuable. In addition, because there is no central authority controlling the creation of new tokens, there is no risk of losing control of your holdings due to government regulations.
7. Ownership
With NFTs, you can prove that you own something without sharing your private keys. This allows you to keep your identity private while still proving ownership of your belongings.
8. Accessibility
Because NFTs are based on blockchain technology, anyone can verify transactions and see how much value each token holds. There is no need for third party services to confirm ownership.
9. Customizability
The process of creating NFTs is extremely simple. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, you don’t need to learn complex programming languages to mine or purchase NFTs. You can simply buy them with fiat currency from exchanges like OpenSea.
10. Scalability
The number of NFTs that can be created per second is unlimited. This allows us to scale as needed to accommodate increasing transaction volume.
The Future of Financial Innovation: A New Era for Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology is one of the most disruptive innovations in recent times, and it has already changed the way people do business on a global scale. It has created an entirely new industry of startups, companies, and entrepreneurs making millions of dollars every day. The reason for this sudden growth is quite simple: blockchains have the potential to completely revolutionize the entire financial sector.
Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger which enables a network of computers to share information simultaneously. Because of this, blockchains eliminate the need for intermediaries, thereby reducing costs and increasing efficiency. They also provide better security through immutability and transparency.
However, despite these advantages, the financial sector has been slow to adopt blockchain technology. One of the main reasons is the lack of viable applications for blockchain-based solutions. Another challenge is the complexity of integrating blockchain into existing systems.
However, the situation is about to change dramatically. Many prominent banks and financial organizations are currently looking into how blockchain technology may be integrated into their operations. As a result, we may soon see the introduction of creative financial solutions that were previously unthinkable due to outdated system limitations.
One of the first areas where we expect to see major changes is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding platforms enable individuals to raise money online by offering rewards to investors in exchange for funding certain ventures. However, because of regulatory restrictions, only accredited investors (those who make more than $200,000 annually) are allowed to invest in such ventures.
This restriction makes it difficult for regular people to participate in such markets, since they must pay high fees to access them. However, if you look at crowdfunding from a different perspective, you can see its true value.
For example, consider a startup company that wants to develop a new product or service. If it cannot find any venture capital, then it would not be able to launch its product until it reaches profitability. However, if it had the ability to crowdfund, it could get the necessary funds upfront by selling shares to interested parties. This would allow it to start marketing its product before reaching profitability, thus improving its chances of success.
Blockchain technology will alter banking in many ways, including crowdfunding sites. In fact, there are many other areas where blockchain technology will create significant opportunities.
The most expensive NFT sold this year
At the beginning of 2021, relative few had heard about Non-Fungible Tokens (or NFTs) and their potential applications. By the end of the month, they had become popular and the Collins Dictionary called them its word of the year.
According to JPMorgan analysts, the average price per token sold in January 2020 was $1,300. By the end of March, the same analysts estimate that the average price per token was $1,600.
In May, the average price reached $3,500. Then, on July 1st, the average price hit $4,900. On August 31st, the average price was almost $6,400. Finally, on November 30th, the average price dropped below $5,000.
On December 31st, the average token price was $2,800.