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Sorare Guide – The Global Fantasy Football Game

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We are very pleased to bring you something new today and it would be fair to say we haven’t been this excited about a new service for quite some time – probably years in fact!

This is a relatively new concept and is a little bit different from the type of thing we normally review here at Honest Betting Reviews. In fact it isn’t really betting at all – but it does have significant potential for a budding trader and someone with good football knowledge to benefit from. 

The service in question is called Sorare and it is perhaps best described as a mixture between fantasy football and online trading cards.

We have just joined the platform recently and bought some cards ourselves and are really enjoying the experience. Our initial investment has more than trebled in a short space of time as the platform has taken off recently. 

What particularly interested us about this is that unlike a lot of other fantasy football games where only a handful of people win prizes out of hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of entrants, Sorare provide a guaranteed payout for simply hitting certain scores. And those scores are very achievable – in fact with a reasonably good team you should hit them fairly often.

Plus there are other prizes of cash, goodies and cards (currently worth hundreds and even thousands of pounds) for those who do really well in the twice-weekly contests, meaning the value proposition here is superb. 

Add in the additional collectibles aspect – a Cristiano Ronaldo card went for over $100,000 in a recent auction and Kylian Mbappe cards are regularly going for over $50,000 for example – and you a have pretty awesome mix!

That’s not just our opinion though – Sorare just raised $50m in Series A funding from a group of investors including Benchmark, who were early investors in Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Uber and Spotify.

Other investors include footballers Rio Ferdinand, Antoine Griezmann and Andre Schuerrle, venture capital firm Accel, Reddit Inc. co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Gary Vaynerchuk. So this is serious business!

Here is Bloomberg announcing the $50m in funding for Sorare:

Sorare have already signed up some big clubs including Real Madrid, Juventus, Liverpool, PSG, Ajax and Athletico Madrid. Licences for trading cards are hard to come by so it is impressive for Sorare to have already partnered with these clubs. 

There’s quite a lot to take in if you are thinking of joining though so we have put together some content to help you out:

  • Our review/guide to Sorare, which is below.
  • Our strategy and hints for getting the most out of Sorare, which you can read here.
  • And we will be tracking our own team’s performance which you can check out here.

Before getting started though it is probably best to read our guide below explaining what Sorare is all about and how it works and then take some time exploring the strategy guide.

So first up we will explain what Sorare is all about and why we are so excited about it.

In the article below we will cover some key aspects of Sorare including:-

  • What is Sorare?
  • How to play – buying cards, selecting your team and entering competitions
  • How to win rewards and what the prizes are
  • What makes Sorare special? 
  • What is the potential of Sorare?
  • Additional value of cards – use in third party games

You can sign up to Sorare here and get 10 free cards to get you started.

 

What is Sorare?

Sorare is a mixture of fantasy football and online trading cards (collectibles). You can buy cards on the platform and then use them to play in fantasy football games to win prizes.

There are a limited number of cards produced – hence the name “so rare.” These cards are currently split into the following categories:

  • Common cards (white) – these are a set of cards you get for free upon joining the platform and there are an unlimited number of them. You can enter them in the Rookie League (which you can only play for 8 weeks) and in higher leagues, but only one card per gameweek competition in the higher leagues.
  • Rare cards 1/100 (red) – these are cards that have value and that you can buy and sell on the platform. There are a maximum of just 100 of these printed per player per season. These cards start with a 5% scoring bonus in the season of issue.
  • Super Rare cards 1/10 (blue) – much like the Rare cards, but there are only 10 of these printed each season so they have higher value and come with a 25% scoring bonus.
  • Unique cards 1/1 (brown) – as the name would suggest, there is only one of these minted each season. They have extremely high value and come with a 50% scoring bonus.

The Sorare platform is operated on the Ethereum blockchain which means it is fully transparent and cards are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) meaning every card can be tracked, traced and verified and cannot be forged or copied.

 

Signing Up and Buying Your Cards

Okay, so you have decided you want to give Sorare a go. After signing up, you will be allocated 10 free common cards to get you going. 

And if you sign up with this link, you will be given a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards through an auction.

With the 10 common cards, you can enter the Rookie League, but only for a maximum of 8 weeks. The Rookie League is a good place to get started and learn the ropes, but you will probably want to step up and enter the higher leagues after a little while. 

In order to do so, you will need to buy some rare cards. You can do this in two ways:-

  • At auction, which are regularly held on the site throughout the day; or
  • On the secondary market, by buying from other managers. You can view all the cards currently available for sale from other users by searching for and then clicking on a player. As well as paying the asking price for a card, you are allowed to make direct offers to other managers for their card which they can choose to accept or reject.

All transactions on the platform are made in the cryptocurrency Ethereum, although the equivalent values in Euros are displayed next to the player, in case you are not familiar with Ethereum values. 

You can deposit via a debit/credit card using Sorare’s payment partner Ramp, or you can connect your Ethereum wallet if you have one of those and transfer funds from there.

 

Selecting Your Team

To enter the fantasy contests on Sorare, you need to select five players. Hence the name of the contests, “SO5.”

Each contest requires your team of five players to be comprised of the following:-

  • – One Goalkeeper
  • – One Defender 
  • – One Midfielder
  • – One Forward
  • – One “Extra” – which can be any of the above outfield players.

So it is a good idea to get a good mix of these players in your squad – or “Gallery” as it is called on Sorare.

And of course, you probably want more than five players in your squad in case any of your players get injured, suspended or dropped.

Below is a recent team entry of ours into the Global All-Star Division 4:

The “extra” player we selected here was a midfielder, Rafinha of PSG.

You may also want to enter multiple contests/divisions in each gameweek, so buying a diverse portfolio of players in different positions is a good idea in that case. 

You can sign up here and get 10 free “common” cards to get you started.

 

 

The Fantasy Games – Leagues and Divisions

There are a number of different fantasy contests you can enter on Sorare, depending on the players you have at your disposal. 

The leagues are generally split by region and then have numerous divisions:

  • Global All-Star League (4 divisions): you can enter players from anywhere in the world into this contest. Division 4 is the one that has the ETH threshold payouts for hitting 200 or 250 points so is a very popular contest. 
  • Champion Europe (4 divisions): this is limited to players playing in the top 5 big European leagues: Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1. 
  • Global U23 (4 divisions) – this is limited to players under the age of 23 at the start of the season, but they can be from anywhere in the world.
  • Challenger Europe (4 divisions): this comprises players from outside the top 5 European leagues – e.g. Belgium’s Jupiler League, the Dutch Eredivisie, Russian Premier League and Portugese Primeira Liga.
  • Asian League: currently the Japanese J League and Korean K League.
  • American League: currently just the MLS but other leagues are due to be added soon.
  • Rookie League: this is where you can enter your free “common” cards to try and win prizes.
  • Special Weekly contest: the rules for this differ each gameweek but there are often some interesting prizes on offer so it is worth keeping an eye on.

That is how it currently stands but we expect more leagues and divisions to be added as more clubs are onboarded and more users join the Sorare platform. Below is an example of the entry options for some of the leagues you can join.

 

Part of the challenge, if you have a big enough squad of players, is deciding which contests to enter each gameweek and what the best utilisation of your players is. You can only enter one team per division per gameweek, so getting this right matters in terms of your chances of winning a prize. 

It is important to note that the gameweeks run at the following times:-

From Friday 13.00 UTC to Tuesday 13.00 UTC
From Tuesday 13.00 UTC to Friday 13.00 UTC

So you need to enter your teams by the deadline in order for them to be eligible for the contests and to be able to win prizes. Note though that each “gameweek” is in fact just a few days, so there are normally two gameweeks per actual week. 

Sign up with this link to get a free Rare Card once you have bought your first five Rare cards at auction.

 

Scoring on Sorare

Okay, so you have bought some cards, entered them in a contest and are all ready to see how your team gets on. Let’s have a look now at how players score points in the fantasy game SO5. 

The scoring matrix is quite complex but is essentially comprised of three elements:-

  • A player’s Decisive Score – this is for big things like scoring a goal, getting an assist, winning a penalty or making a clearance off the line. For each of the positive things a player does, he moves up a level and for each negative thing he does (red card, own goal, penalty conceded), he moves down a level. The points go from -15 at level -1 up to 100 points for achieving level 5. 
  • A player’s All-Around Score – these are small points a player can get for all the little things they do in a game: 2 for a block, 3 for a tackle, 3 for a big chance created, -3 for a yellow card etc. All these little points add up (or come off) during the course of a game. 
  • The Card Bonus – each individual card has its own bonus percentage, which you can see below it. A rare card gets a 5% bonus if it is from the current season, your allocated captain for each contest gets a 20% bonus and then players can earn additional experience “XP” points by playing more and training. 

So to calculate the player’s score for the gameweek it is simply:

The Decisive Score + the All-Around Score x by the bonus.

That might sound a little complicated so let’s take a look at an example.

Here is a score from our Bentancur card from a recent gameweek:-

 

  • Bentancur’s Decisive Score was 35 points
  • His All-Around Score was 48.4 points
  • His Bonus was 22.5% (as our captain) 

So that meant: decisive score of 35 + all around score of 48.4 x the bonus of 22.5% = 101.33 points.

You add up the scores of your players in the contest you have entered them in and then you get your team score for that gameweek. 

Sign up here and get a free rare card when you buy five rare cards at auction. 

 

Winning Prizes on Sorare

Now for the exciting part – how you can win prizes on Sorare. 

Each contest has its own prize structure, which you can view by clicking “play” in the top menu, selecting the relevant gameweek you want, then towards the top of the page clicking “View Prize Pool.”

 

The lower the division, the more people that will receive prizes. However, more people will enter those contests, so as a percentage there’s a bigger chance of winning a prize in the higher divisions. 

Anyway, as an example let’s take a look at the prizes for the Global All Star Division 4 at the time of writing. Please note these are subject to change so may well be different when you are reading this. 

1st: 1x Star Rare
€644.52 0.5 ETH

2nd: 1x Star Rare
€386.71 0.3 ETH

3rd: 1x Star Rare
€257.81 0.2 ETH

Participation:

4th to 13th: 1x Tier 1 Rare

14th to 34th: 1x Tier 2 Rare

35th to 130th: 1x Tier 3 Rare

Thresholds:

Score > 250: €25.78 0.02 ETH

Score > 205: €12.89 0.01 ETH

So as you can see, the winner of the contest get a star rare card, currently worth hundreds – or even thousands – of Euros plus 0.5 Ethereum, currently worth €644.52.

Prizes go right down to 130th place though with those entrants receiving a Rare card reward.

And as we mentioned above, the real b