Cryptocurrencies are not just an investment opportunity and a new perspective on the world of finance. They are also a cornerstone on which the many incoming metaverses will rest (as we told you in our special on cryptocurrencies and metaverse) and a tool with which to open new paths and overcome barriers in gaming. In this regard, the project of Sorare, a French startup poised between fantasy sport, card games, cryptocurrencies and NFT, has risen to prominence these days for joining the board of the tennis champion Serena Williams.
Sorare is an extremely interesting game especially for fantasy football fans, which allows users to challenge their virtual teams and to buy and sell the best talents in international football, with the dual purpose of strengthening their team and earning money. in the form of Ethereum. At the time of writing, Sorare owns the license of 225 clubs (including those of Cagliari, Genoa, Verona, Inter, Juventus, Lazio, Milan, Rome, Sampdoria and Udinese) and 39 leagues, including Serie A, Liga, Premier League and Bundesliga. But it certainly does not end here: in the near future, Sorare aims to increase its licenses and also to expand towards women’s football and other sports competitions.
Sorare: how the blockchain fantasy game works
To play Sorare you just need any desktop or mobile browser, with which to connect to the official website. Once registered, we can begin to compose our team which, at least initially, will be composed only of free community cards, on which no trading operations can be carried out. Taking into account our favorite teams, the system will automatically assign us a shortlist of players, with whom to start our adventure in Sorare. Immediately after, taking into account the games that individual players will have to face, their effective possibility to play and affect the final result and the potential bonuses that the system will report to us, we can deploy our formation. It is played in 5: a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder, a forward and a joker of any role (goalkeeper excluded. We will then have to choose wisely a captain, who will bring us extra points.
Once our formation has been deployed, we just have to wait for the outcome of the matches of our favorites by cheering for them, exactly as it happens for fantasy football. The rewards of the Casual league, the only one we can participate in with community cards, still allow us to improve our condition. At the end of each day, which coincides with a day of international football, each participant will in fact be given a card of a player with which to improve their squad. However, the top three ranked players will receive a limited edition one player card in the form of an NFT. And this is where things get a lot more interesting.
The race to success
For each football season, each player present in Sorare is placed on the market in 5 forms: how plain paper, which as we have just seen has no commercial value, such as limited edition, present in only 1000 pieces, such as rare card (100 pieces), super rare (10 pieces) or single card, distributed just once. As per the law of the market, the increase in the rarity of a piece (and the demand of that player) coincides with an increase in the price. If we get to field 5 limited edition players (through our results in the Casual league or through the purchase of a card from other players), we can participate in further competitions, with much more interesting prizes: at the time of writing, for each day to the winner of the All Star era reserved for limited edition players are well 130 euros (paid in Ethereum) plus an additional card of a star, also in a limited edition.
An important bonus, which allows us to collect a nice nest egg or alternatively to improve our squad with stronger players or rarer cards. Currently, € 719, plus an additional super rare card, goes to the winner of the All Star league reserved for unique cards for each day. Not bad, especially when compared to what happens in a common fantasy football league, where for an entry fee of 50-100 euros you can win 5-6 times as much, but only once a season. On Sorare, on the other hand, you win every day (potentially even several times), and above all our entry fee remains our property, in the form of NFTs that can be transferred at any time to the highest bidder.
The costs of Sorare
Our role in Sorare therefore approaches that of a football manager or a football manager coach. It is not only about winning, but also and above all to set up a winning strategy that allows us to increase the value of our squad in the medium term. Therefore, it hunts for young talents and players about to move, who could find a longer playing time in other shores. Caution, on the other hand, for the more seasoned athletes, who are heading towards the football sunset and towards an increasingly marginal contribution on the field.
Compared to the classic play-to-earn involving cryptocurrencies, Sorare is definitely more accessible. It is indeed possible to play for free and aim to grow with patience and self-denial. However, even the entry level for the purchase of players is much more accessible than that of other realities: with a budget of 50-60 euros it is in fact possible to skip a step and build a roster of limited edition players, with which begin our race to success.
To get a buying guide in the already vast universe of Sorare, we can resort to external tools such as Transfermarkt, the most famous and detailed database on football, or to Soraredata, a platform owned by Sorare itself that provides us with an impressive variety of statistics on the performance in the game of the various players and on the evaluation of the different cards, which we can then purchase either through direct sales by a user, or through auctions for new cards or new 5-card packs placed in the game.
Green light therefore to our climb to the top of Sorare, which undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of it. But beware of the real Achilles heel of Ethereum, that is the high commissions for transactions, which can negatively affect our earnings.