Before we get to the actual topic: The best thing to do while you’re reading is to take a look for yourself and click here to go to Sorare.
No doubt about it. Sorare is a completely new concept and of course still quite an unknown brand. Most people do not trust anything new or unknown right away. Therefore, the question arises:
Is Sorare serious or a scam?
It is important to first understand how Sorare works. On Sorare you can buy NFTs of football players. These are basically trading cards that are on the blockchain and belong to you. This is important because it’s anything but a given. Normally, such cards are issued by a central provider and can be taken away from you at any time. This is not possible with Sorare.
With these cards you can create small football teams of 5 players and compete in different leagues. If you think “that’s like Comunio”, you should consider that Sorare pays out a lot of prize money and some managers can even live off it. At Sorare, there are not only more cards as prize money, but also prize money in the form of Ethereum (or Euros if you want).
With the right strategy, it is easily possible to buy a team for 600-800€ (as of December 2021) and regularly, i.e. every 1 to 3 match days, land in the prize money and be rewarded according to performance. That can easily be the equivalent of 30-80€. That’s not a bad return and of course you have to ask yourself: how can that work?
How does Sorare make money?
Of course, Sorare first has to earn money in order to be able to pay out such attractive prize money. And this is done by “minting” cards. This means that Sorare issues player cards for the first time and auctions them off. 100% of the proceeds go to Sorare because Sorare is also the owner of the cards. If you buy cards from other managers on the transfer market, Sorare does not even receive a fee.
This business model is quite lucrative if you imagine that there are over 200 clubs and theoretically 1111 cards per season from each player. However, only a fraction of these cards are issued, so there are far fewer in circulation. Nevertheless, Sorare has the opportunity to turn all of these cards into money, even if some cards from unknown players are only worth 3-4 euros, for example.
Why can so much money be won?
The prize money of Sorare is so attractive that one has to ask oneself:
If I can make 5-10% “return” per week with good buying and management, how are other managers doing?
Basically, Sorare must be a zero-sum game, meaning that you only get prize money if many others fail at it. And that’s how it is. No 10% usually ends up in the prize money. Many managers sometimes buy cards that are too expensive, use them wrongly or play in the wrong leagues (in which they have no chance). Some hope to be able to sell their cards at a later date, but it’s not that simple.
Because cards are basically inflationary at Sorare and new ones are printed every season. New Sorare cards have a 5% bonus which is of course attractive. In the next season, the card loses this bonus, which makes it fall in value. Not dramatically, but still. If I blindly buy 100 cards now, half of them will certainly be worth much less in a few months. In short, there are many ways to lose money with Sorare or, let’s say, to “invest badly”. Because Sorare cards are actually an investment and not a bet or anything like that. That’s what makes this game so appealing.
Is Sorare legit?
Sorare is, as I said, still very new. I have been active there since March 2021. Unfortunately, that doesn’t say much yet. No one can say that they have already gained years of experience with Sorare. They can’t.
But one thing is a fact: Sorare closed a 680 million financing round in autumn 2021. They definitely have a lot of money. And they have, above all, a very lucrative business model (otherwise the financing would hardly have been possible in this form). They would be extremely stupid if they messed this up.
Sorare’s player cards are in the blockchain and they can’t be stolen. So you don’t have to be afraid that Sorare will just run away with them. Of course, if Sorare stops running the leagues, the cards will lose value. You can still sell them on marketplaces like OpenSea but you won’t get much for them.
After all, Sorare is a French company and therefore in the EU, not in a tax haven in the Channel Islands.
What is my experience with Sorare?
So far everything has worked smoothly. Both the withdrawal and deposit via credit card with Euro or Ethereum with Metamask. The money is credited immediately, the fees are those that are displayed. Of course, the high gas fees for Ethereum transactions are annoying – but Sorare can’t do anything about that (and should hopefully change with Ethereum 2.0).
Unfortunately, verification does not work smoothly for everyone, but this is due to the payment service provider (Ramp) – not Sorare. But this is a point that, in my opinion, definitely has potential for improvement. There have already been many a manager who left in frustration because his deposit limit was limited to 100€.
Technically, the platform works perfectly. So far, I have experienced neither problems with the line-ups nor with the transfer market. From this point of view, Sorare has definitely done its homework.
Conclusion
There is a lot to consider when it comes to judging the seriousness of Sorare. It is simply a completely new concept and no one can claim that it is absolutely safe to join. There is no guarantee that you will win prize money. There is no guarantee that the cards you buy today will be worth the same in a year’s time. It is always possible that, for example, the Ethereum price collapses and a card you bought for the equivalent of €100 today will only be worth €50 in a few weeks. It is also possible that card values in general will collapse for whatever reason. You just have to be aware of that. Sorare cards have much less value outside of Sorare. So you can’t just say: if Sorare doesn’t exist anymore, I’ll play with the cards somewhere else… Maybe that will be possible some day.
Therefore: be aware of the risk and only risk money that you can also lose. If you do that, you can be much more relaxed about it. Because no one will be able to confirm the seriousness 100%. And if you’d like to receive a free Limited card simply use this link to sign up and test Sorare for yourself.