Sorare: How to Earn Money with a Fantasy Football NFT Crypto Game

In my case, it’s a bit complicated because I have been trading players and taking money out of Sorare. But according to my calculations, I invested something like $3000 over time, I managed to retrieve $5000 and my deck is currently still worth around $12000. So, I basically multiplied my money by 5 in less than a year.

BUT it’s a terrible performance compared to people that were not stupid like me, and did not sell their cards. On soraredata, you can check people that entered around the same time as me, and did a x15. I am a bit unlucky, I sold half of my card deck (in fevruary 2021) just before THE big NFT Sorare card price pump. Because we were in the middle of the ETH pump (I cashed out ETH to earn 6% on them with Lido with the coming ETH 2.0 ), I thought that the Sorare cards would lose in value. Too bad, the eth pump was less epic than the pump of the Sorare NFT card price . As I told you in other posts, I am a very terrible trader. Don’t be like me, hold!

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How to start Sorare: best practices, tricks and advices!

There is a rookie league, that lets you play for free for 8 weeks. But let’s be honest, rewards are terrible, you won’t make any buck out of it. But it’s perfect to understand the mechanics, before throwing a couple of dollars in the game.

The mechanism of the rookie league has changed this year. Before this change you hadto choose 10 players at the start with a given budget. You could pick your favorite players, but because they limit your possible budget to spend, you would not be able to buy Neymar, Mbappe, Messi and Ronaldo! That would be too easy, right? If you planned to become good at Sorare, it was actually important to pick the right players, as soon as in the rookie league! 

Update Summer 2021:

The mechanism of the rookie league has changed this year. It does not rely anymore on having to select 10 players with a given budget. Instead, when you create your account for the first time, Sorare asks you to select three clubs you are a fan of in order to distribute free cards of players from these clubs. The common free cards (these cards are white) can be played in the rookie league (team of 5 common cards) but also, in some other divisions, such as the Global All Star Division 4. This division allows you to complete your team of 4 “rare” players with a fifth common card. This one will have a handicap, compared to the rare cards, but it’s still very practical to complete your composition, and it’s one less card to acquire.

As goalkeepers are much rarer than other roles in real soccer, it is also the case in Sorare: their prices are significantly higher than all other types of players. The goalkeepers common free cards.

Here are the rules to pick the best cards for your progression:

• Rule 1:  I recommend that when you sign up, you pretend to be a fan of 3 teams with very good goalkeepers, and not your 3 favorites teams. You will have a chance to get randomly a strong goalkeeper that later could be useful to align in your Global All Star Division 4 competitions, instead of having to buy a very expensive goalkeeper card. These cards will also ALSO be useful in the training divisions!
• Rule 2:  USE A REFERRAL CODE! If you use a referral code, once you buy 5 rare cards, you will get as a reward a 6^th random rare card! I have seen with my eyes, a guy earning a rare Mbappé card thanks to the referral program! It was 2000 dollars back at that time. Crazy right? If you want to support me, and liked all the tricks and advices I gave you on Sorare, consider using my referral code!
• Rule 1: see rule 1 and rule 2. This is how important these rules are for a good start!

Now if you are ready to start, the best resource for a step-by-step guide is here.

How to earn money on Sorare ?

I still plan to make money out of Sorare. How? First, by holding my players, they are going to rise in price because I use my knowledge to scoot future good players. But I don’t have the time anymore to spend hours every day on Sorare (this blog takes a lot of my spare time!). But if you have time, here is how you could multiply your money, just like I did:

• Use Soraredata to search for players being sold below their average price compared to similar player price. 
• Buy good players that just got injured. Their price will have tanked, making it the perfect opportunity to buy them. Try to buy players with good physical conditions but more importantly, with good technical skills. They may become a bit less physically fit, but will compensate with their technical skills. Don’t buy a sprinter that just did his ACL joints…
• In the same way, off season players will be cheaper.
• For people used to the collectible mechanics, all the cards of the same edition have the same basic price EXCEPT the 1^st card of the 1/10 editions and the 1st card of the 1/100. They have a premium for being the 1^st. They will have a boost in terms of value. Sooner or later. Check on Soraredata if one of this 1^st/100 is not being sold at regular price, because its owner did not realize it had a premium bonus.
• Sell your players that have been over-performing (you need to watch the games to get this feeling. For attackers it’s simpler, compare the number of goals to the xG, the number of expected goals). Buy underperforming players.
• Check in which division it is easier to earn rewards. For a long time, the threshold in terms of points to earn a reward was lower in division 3 than division 4! That’s stupid, but people did not notice. I aligned my best players in division 3 instead of division 4 and earned quite some rewards.
• In division 4, just align “good” but not your best players. Just try to aim for the ETH rewards. It’s close to impossible to get on the podium in this division due to too many people entering in this division. I actually manage to earn once per week the ETH rewards (0.01 or 0.02 ETH = $36 or 72$ per week), with usually my goalkeeper being a common card!

These are just some of the tricks and tips that I have used. I have a few more advices in reserve, let me know if you would like a dedicated article. More generally, you can follow this guide for the best tutorial on how to play Sorare. 

Sorare scarcity mechanics: the unique, super rare and rare cards

Sorare has formed partnerships with over 150 football worldwide clubs: some La Liga clubs (Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, FC Barcelona…), some Serie A clubs (Juventus, Inter Milan, AS Roma…), Bundesliga (Bayern Munich), Ligue 1 (Paris Saint German PSG, Olympique Lyonnais, Olympique Marseille), Premier League (Liverpool), the whole MLS clubs, J1 league (Japan) and many more.

Every player in these clubs will have official licensed NFT cards. Until today, each footballer is represented by 111 cards (every season):

• 1 “Unique” card (unique cards are black/brown).
• 10 “Super Rare” editions (super rare cards are blue).
• 100 “Rare” editions (rare cards are red).
• New, player cards will be launched this Friday, August 13 2021, to make it easier for newcomers to get started: 1000 “Limited” cards editions (limited cards are yellow).

Sorare mechanics: cards scarcity, divisions and rewards.

What is the difference between all the cards editions (unique, super rare, rare and now limited)? They enable competing in different “divisions”. Just for the sake of clarity, I will simplify the divisions (but it’s a bit more complicate in reality). In division 1 only unique card can be aligned. In division 2, only uniques and super rares. In Division 3, only super rares and rares. In Division 4, only rares. Because unique are scarcer than the others, they cost way more. The same way, super rares are more expensive than rares. The rewards for divisions 1 are usually in the form of unique card. If you pay a lot to have expensive unique cards, you can compete in a division where rewards are expensive cards. Seems logical, right?

Now that you have understood the difference between the different editions of cards, you must have understood that fundamentally, all of them have the same basic statistics, based on the player’s current performance in official competitions. There is just a little multiplier effect on the cards based on the editions. The scarcer the edition of the card, the higher the multiplier (and hence the price!). An interesting mechanic: cards can earn experience, and pass levels to increase their multiplier effect (and increase their price, again!).

The cards do not expire, so it doesn’t matter if the card was issued when the player was in a different club than his current club. Unlike FIFA Ultimate Team where cards expire at the end of each season, the only expiration for Sorare’s cards is the player’s retirement (but there are plans to make retired football still useful).

If you combined all of these ingredients together, you end up with prices soaring to several thousand euros for some highly coveted cards.

The new league: the 1/1000 limited card edition

Sorare has been suffering from an issue for quite a long time: 1/100 cards, the cheapest cards, already cost way too much. To be able to compose a competitive team, you have to spend something like at least 1-2eth (of few thousand dollars). Quite crazy, right? Let’s be honest, this game is clearly a Pay to Win. With a bit of luck, you could achieve good rankings from time to time, but to be consistently in the top, and earn quite a lot of money, you needed to spend quite some ETH!

Well, with this new 1/1000 NFT limited card edition, they hope to fix this issue. It will come with a new “Division 5” (only for limited card edition) to remove money as a barrier of entry. We will see soon if this is effective or not (if the number of players increase 10 or 100 times, I am not sure that this Division 5 will have cheaper cards!). 

New, cheaper cards will be launched this Friday, August 13 2021, to make it easier for newcomers to get started. Basically, limited 1/1000 cards is for people wanting to play sorare on a budget!

Update September 2021: Is it worth it to buy limited cards yet ?

I don’t recommend buying limited cards at this time. It’s an investment that is not worth it at the price they are at currently.
I estimate that they are still 5 times too expensive.
Why are the limited still too expensive?

• There are no ETH tiered rewards, according to some point floors,  in division 5 for limited cards, unlike division 4 for rare cards.
• The cost between (the amount of money to invest to be in the first places) / divided by (the value of the rewards in the first places) is currently in favor of the rare cards and not the limited cards. For now. I’ll keep an eye on the trend.