This Play to Earn Guide is all about how to play Sorare and earn rewards. The rise of NFTs touches all kinds of industries, and Sorare revolutionizes the ones of fantasy football and collectible cards. In this NFT-powered fantasy football game players collect cards to make teams, and then earn new cards or money based on the performance of their squad.
The play-to-earn mechanisms in Sorare are relatively new. The game always allowed top performing players to earn new NFT cards. However, earlier this year the French development team behind the game introduced also a financial benefit. However, it’s worth noting that the value of the NFT cards exceeds the value of the crypto prizes in most cases.
Sorare offers different leagues for different types of cards. Every week there are two play rounds, and everybody who has the right cards can compete. Top performers in those league win cards and a financial reward, while there are smaller financial rewards of 0.02 and 0.01 ETH for players whose teams didn’t make it to the top positions. Now let’s see what Sorare is all about.
Sorare overview
Sorare is a blockchain-based fantasy football game that was launched in 2019. In Sorare, players can manage, buy, sell, and trade a virtual team of player cards. These player cards are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), each of them number and provably unique on the blockchain. Currently, the most expensive Sorare game player cards are worth tens of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the cheapest player card trades at 0.005 ETH.
Sorare is an NFT platform that is built on the Ethereum-blockchain. The player card NFTs are based on the ERC-721 standard. These player cards are separated into tiers dues to their scarcity. We have the common, limited, rare, super rare, and unique Sorare player cards. These cards represent real football players from clubs in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.
The common cards have no value and can’t be traded. These are the free-to-play options for Sorare. All other cards can be traded on the NFT marketplace. The lowest value cards are the yellow, Limited cards. Each season every Limited player cards can get 1000 copies. The rare ones have a red color, and have 100 copies. Super rare ones are blue, and have ten copies, while the unique card has a maximum of one copy per player per season.
Using these cards, Sorare game managers need to build a virtual football team consisting of 5 players. Each of these players must be represented by a different player card. In every team you need a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, attacker and one extra fieldplayer. Based on the real world performance of the player depicted on the cards, the fantasy football team will earn points and thanks to that, possibly, some rewards.
What can you win in Sorare
When you log in to Sorare for the first team, you will get some credits to make a team of common cards. This allows newcomers to get used to the gameplay Sorare offers. However, you want to earn from this game. Therefore you will need to buy player cards. The yellow-colored Limited cards are generally the cheapest, but these also offer the smallest rewards when playing.
In the Global All-Star competitions players can use all player cards. However, Division 5 is limited it Limited cards only. Here the top 3 players earn 0.250 ETH, 0.190 ETH and 0.150 ETH respectively alongside a Star Limited player card. From the 4th until the 510th place, competitors will win 1 Limited cards from a certain tier depending on the ranking.
Players who use the more expensive Rare cards in Division 4, win bigger money prizes and of course Rare cards as a reward. In addition, everybody with at least 205 points will earn 0.01 ETH and 250 points or more earns a fantasy football manager 0.02 ETH. These money prizes based on points only exist in Division 4, and are meant to bring players over to Division 3 easier. In Division 3 players will need several Super Rare cards on order to be competitive, and yes, the (financial) rewards for top players will be even bigger.
Those who dive into Sorare to play and earn money, should ambition to at least get rare cards. According to data from SorareData there are approximately 8,000 players competing in Global All-Star Division 4 every week. In order to compete for the top spots in the division, managers will need a range of player cards for footballers that are active on a weekly basis. It requires quite a serious investment to get top players, but it’s important to note that a good player at a mediocre team can score as many points as a superstar.
What do you need to pay
Gamers who want to play Sorare and expect to earn a lot, will definitely need to invest quite a lot. Even though you only need five cards to play, you will want a couple cards more. So let’s say we’re going for eight cards. Looking at the data from SorareData a somewhat famous player will probably cost you 0.2 ETH. Add two reasonable talents to that for 0.15 each and then 5 mediocre ones for 0.07 each. This will bring your total investment to approximately 0.85 ETH or almost $3.000 at the current rates. That’s quite hefty, and that possibly makes Division 4 not for every everybody.
Division 5 is of course an option, but will limit your play-to-earn chances to winning cards. However, win enough cards and you will probably end up in the Top 3 once, at some point. Plenty of the yellow-colored Limited cards got for 0.001 up to 0.005 ETH each. Only the real stars go far a lot more. So it’s always an option to star in Division 5.
How do you win
Twice per week there’s a so-called Game Week. These are the match rounds on the Sorare platform. Managers, that’s you, can see which of their cards will have a match. When they have a match, managers can select them for a team in a certain league of division. Every team has a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, attacker and an extra player. Sorare doesn’t give any status updates about the players, so it’s up to the managers to know about injuries, bans, COVID infections, or when a player is being benched for whatever reason.
Once the game week starts, players can’t make any changes to their teams anymore. So you need to be on time. Select a team of five players, and hope for the best. Based on their real-world performance, they player cards will earn points. These points will determine the rankings, and with it also the prizes someone will earn. Goalkeepers shouldn’t concede many goals, defenders should make great interceptions, midfielders should pass a lot without losing the ball, and attackers should score the goals.
Keep in mind though…
Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.
Johan Cruijff
