SorareBRAG, the story

Hibee: How did SorareBRAG begin? I think it was in April of last year.

Thomas, my cofounder, came and said: let's do something around Sorare. The combination of a Developer (him) & Project Manager (myself) sounded great, so we decided to go!

It's two different things to be found in the game and to build an app linked to Sorare.

After a brainstorming session and several minutes, we arrived at an idea that is nearly what the website is today.

A significant point we were working on since day one is the availability on desktop and mobile.

We launched on April 2021, and we have delivered improvements since (even though we took a break during the summer).

Hibee: I started the SorarePodcast League on SorareBRAG and love the magic prediction. That is something exciting. How do you do that?

We would like to know if your players will be good or not during the weekend based on two different data: the last performance of the player and the last performance against this particular team mainly.

YNWA: What is the "punching bag"?

It's the different scores between you and your punching bag.

YNWA: Can you see yourself spending more time on Sorare as a Manager or for developing SorareBRAG?

Really hard question, 1 year ago I could not predict this, but I definitely want a stable product. For now, I do not know.

YNWA: Anyway, wish you enormous success with what you will decide to do. SorareBRAG looks very polished.

Thank you so much. We wanted a viable product easy to play with, not a BETA, so we needed a good design. We spent a lot of time thinking about where the information should be in order for the users to be easy to use. I think we managed to do well because we had a lot of positive feedback and found out that 50% are playing on mobile.

Hibee: If it is as easy as you only need to pick up your phone to be involved, that is super great.

YNWA: I just want to come back to your personal account. Are there any other tools you are using to help influence your decisions or influence the game as a manager?

I use all the available tools. Sometimes I use SorareBRAG in addition to SorareData. But SorareBRAG is only helpful for the next GW. To increase my roaster, I will probably prefer SorareData. I also use the information on Twitter to do an excellent choice to buy the right players.

2022 for SorareBRAG

Several points are on our to-do list:

• Add the possibility to customize your league. For the moment you do not have any choice when you create your league. In the future, we want to implement some specific rules if you want to have some features
• Create more interactions between managers on the website
• Working to have events on the website

Those are the three main topics we are working on.

Hibee: Having fun with your opponent is quite nice because it's something we miss for Sorare. It looks like SorareBRAG is a nice place for that. To come with a group of friends to bash each other.

YNWA: There is also a repercussion regarding the teams we use (for example, a team lost 5-0), and we used these players; I think SorareBRAG, everything is in the name "BRAG"!

It's the point of the platform. Now we want to do the actual "BRAG" let's say.

You can create a League composed of 6 persons or 8 people per league.

Bundesliga & 2 weeks of auctions since the last podcasts

Hibee: You bought the 1/100 Haaland Bundesliga card

YNWA: Yeah, I love the Bundesliga cards and I think that the designs we have seen this year are better than the previous years. There are months to come, and personally, I do not want to buy a lot of cards. In the month of October, I wanted to sell as many cards as possible because the Bundesliga will fall at some point. Interesting to see how he will do in his career, and hopefully, we will see 50 Halaand on the market in the same way we have seen Mbappe.

Hibee: It is the kind of player you know will have a bright future but everything can happen, injury, for example, even I do not wish so.

YNWA: As you said, out of 20, there will be 1 or 2 that will succeed. I think in this game when you see the prices of some cards, Havertz came out early and scored the goal of the Champions League final this season, and in his second season, Unique was picked for 27 ETH, Pedri was bought for 35 ETH, and Halaand is this kind of players, a lot speculative. It is a rollercoaster ride, of course, but this kind of card can also be the most valuable in the future.

I do not have the knowledge regarding the Bundesliga to buy someone who will explode in a few weeks or months. Maybe once I have collected more information, I will buy 1 or 2 players from Bundesliga.

Hibee: It is hard to judge when new cards come on because it may seem relatively high. That is relative to each player. I personally do not think that the prices will go down because of a higher demand coming in.

YNWA: The general supply seems to be discussed by managers, especially regarding Limited. ETH has skyrocketed since Limited was issued. D5 is the easiest way to compete and is accessible to everyone. For me, someone that is taking advantage right now on the platform, if you want to perform on the platform in the long run with x100 users coming on the platform every week, you will need five players scoring 80+ / week to be top-ranked and get the top-level cards. Some managers feel that the Limited market is segmented differently compared to the Rare, Super Rare, and Unique, but I still feel that there is no real change if we look at the Rare & the Limited markets, or the Unique market. We will have a clearer confirmation when we will get this famous progress bar, and there is something more clear about the Tier 3 - Tier 2 & Tier 1 categories. The Rare, Super Rare, and Unique markets have maintained, in my opinion, some kinds of strong trends where the Limited one is backing these trends. If people think "WoW, is going down...", we need to ask these people: "Do you think this trend is going in a single way up and the prices always increase?". Personally, I am not sure of that, and it is normal.

Hibee: Yeah, I think it's psychological. People are coming early and think that huge numbers can come in some days. We cannot be based on assumptions on the first hundred Limited cards. We need at least 10 000 and more entries in D5 to have enough data and take a position. For most people, a long-term view is needed and does not be based on 1 GW. Changing your team every GW is not the best option, in my opinion. Panic early on is understandable, but think about how you can succeed, and it is by thinking that some weeks ago, you paid half of what a player is worth today. If you are buying cards to build a strong competitive advantage, keep doing that.

YNWA: On the Limited market, you should be buying cards for fun, and if you compete with thousands of managers, I do not think you should come with the expectation: "I'm gonna win a prize". You win a fantastic prize, good job, good week, but not buying cards to flip on other people is a very dangerous game. You have to be realistic. If you come on the platform with 1,000$ and want at the end of 1 year 1,500$, it is 50%. People always want more. As the game keeps growing, the returns decrease, which is logical. People come and say: "I would have more if I was stacking Bitcoin or ETH than investing in Sorare". I say: "Of course, you could, but you have decided to play Sorare".

Hibee: Patience is needed. It is easy to see a player and buy him to make profits, so keep a longer-term view and ask yourself why you are here and for what. This game will attract millions of users. For me, that leads me to think: "This game is in the right direction". It is going somewhere that will be pretty special. The short-term should not overtake the lead in your head.

YNWA: You could have made money with scouting. I've seen people on Twitter and tried to buy players to sell them one or two weeks later. How much do you reasonably expect to make in one or two weeks? If you look attentively, and I've seen them, some people made 50x by owning a player for over a year. What you have to do is to extend your vision a little bit more; yes, I would love to do 10x on any game tomorrow; that would be lovely. That's not gonna happen except if you have an early advantage. In Sorare, both types of returns are possible. You do not sell a player because it has been a bad week for him.

Hibee: Are you going for some Limited?

Nope, I focus on Champions Europe Rare and decided to do not "de-focused" myself. So I said no to the Limited.

Hibee: Fair enough. Speaking about Sorare, it is essential to choose as few divisions as you can compete. It is not a good decision to go for all divisions, in my opinion.

YNWA: Right now, if someone is building a team with players scoring +50 points/GW on average that costs 15$ to 50$, it may not produce any results in the short term, but if you believe that Sorare will fix the prize structures and many other things. This person will be confident that owning 40 players that score 50+ every week will be better in 6 months' time than it is today on the platform.

Another thing that amazed me this week was the comments about the prizes. "There are still no fair prizes in Div2; why are people still playing?". If Sorare changes the Div2 tomorrow and the decisions were good, then the Div3 and Div4 will benefit because the progressions will be better. If more people are playing, they will increase the prizes; it is as simple as that. People are scouting young players that they think will be better in the future. Why not scout and buy cards based on what the game will be in 6 to 12 months? I do not think it is an excellent option to wait for the game to get polished and then find out that the money moves you could have done were great. The game will be better structured and better suited to lead new people to buy new players.

Hibee: I think a lot of improvements will come and enable that. If you are ready to take a risk now, it may pay off. I think opportunities are available now, and because many players and so many teams are here, you can build solid teams, and by taking positions now, you bet that Sorare will continue to grow. I do not think it is so hard to imagine. Teams for the future in Europe, America, and Asia contain bargains.

YNWA: Not taking decisions because there are things you do not know about; there is no problem at all. But not making decisions if you think that the game is gonna be better in 6 to 12 months' time is questionable. If you speculate that there will be changes that will lead to better scores for wings-backs, the scoring system is perfect for wing-backs; as soon as the announcement hits, wing-backs will get 20 to 30% on average more; where the prices are gonna go? There will not go up to 20-30% up but 2x or 3x. Do not look at the game out of a seven days window.

Hibee: What are the futures of your teams?

I try to reach enough stars in my team to not be impacted if players are injured. I do not play too many divisions. I want to improve the international characteristics of my team. I need more stars and more diversity.