Introduction

He joined on the 26th of June 2020 and has been on the platform for two and a half years at the time of writing this article. He was not used to playing Fantasy Football but was involved in Football Index and Footstock. Years ago, he joined Football Index, and this platform made mad few people as the platform did not end up well. Some people he was playing with, and especially a friend, told him that he had already joined Sorare. He told McBrideAce that if he joined, he could win a free card. At that time, there were not a lot of clubs, so he decided to jump in as he considered it a great opportunity. At that time, the referral rewards were in Rare scarcity, so he had the chance to win Pau Lopez, a pretty good referral, as the price of this card was around 60$, and he needed a goalkeeper. He started with a small budget, like 100$. Since the beginning, he likes buying a guy for 10$ and keeping him to use, and potentially selling him for a profit. Even today, goalkeepers are still expensive, so he is continuously buying some back-ups goalkeepers. Everything started from there, and after some win in SO5, he has sold some young players that have done well or injured players. Also, a few months after he joined, Sorare added a lot of different leagues and clubs, such as Eredivisie and Real Madrid. After that time he decided to play at another level and change some of his Belgian players to level up his teams.

Budget Management

He never really planned a budget to spend on Sorare. The overall budget management strategy he decided to apply when he started was to buy some players for 15$ to 20$. When he started, he never said to himself: “Okay, here is 2,000$, and it will go to Sorare”. He was more comfortable with starting with a small budget rather than spending a significant amount of money to get the top guys. He logically decided to buy younger players that can develop and injured players.

He was thinking of building a gallery from a long-term perspective. Contrary to the other platforms, on Sorare, you have the possibility to buy a player and keep him, whereas on other platforms, if you lose the contest, you have a great chance to have lost your money forever. The first player he bought for more than 100$ was Cherki. He also considered the players that could move to a better club.

The first player he bought

At that time, he was also buying some other Shaktar players priced around 10$. Shakhtar has some of the cheapest younger players.

When searching for the first trades of McBrideAce, we realized that he had done thousands of transactions. After some research, we found out that the first player McBrideAce bought was an auction lost by sir0B, the founder of SorareInfo. A funny coincidence

Now we understand why sir0B lost. McBrideAce wanted his first card ;)

The evolution of his strategy

When he started, to have the possibility to own Hans Vanaken or a player like this, it was necessary to spend more than 100$. Sorare was just a new platform based in France to the eyes of McBrideAce. Football Index was having some problems at that point. He always had the idea to project in the long run. But the thing was that it was much harder to get Ethereum at that time. He was not planning to spend 200$ or more on a card. All his first buyings were relatively cheap, and he has sold most of these players. Tetê is one of the exceptions, and he is still using him today. Sebastian Szymanski, as well as Cherki, are the youngsters he is still using.

Because obviously, the strategy of buying young players that could be worth more money in the future was working because some of the guys were becoming more expensive, he decided to keep some of them to use them. When he decided to sell some of them, he realized that he was not really competitive on SO5. He saw his gallery value going up mainly thanks to backup goalkeepers that became starters. The thing was that with his initial strategy, he was not winning any cards in SO5. As more and more managers were joining the platform, the prices of his cards were increasing, and he decided to move for players scoring better. The next goal, after building a long-term strategy and having made some profits, was to become competitive. PSG came, and we saw the price of Mbappe skyrocket. At that time, he was still focused on U23, as 70% of his gallery was players under 23. For at least a year, he was still mainly competing in U23. The most expensive players were U23, like Mbappé. The problem with U23, as more clubs and good players, were added, is that the prices are increasing but also the more complicated it became to win the U23 divisions. He explains: “It was good to have the possibility to win Mbappé, but the more Mbappé cards are coming to the platform, the harder it became to beat line-ups containing Mbappé as well”. He decided to scout Asian players that can have good future value even for the All-Star Divisions, as well as MLS players such as Hany Mukhtar. He did not want to spend thousand on PSG players.

The “biggest problem” now, according to McBrideAce is that Sorare has onboarded Celtic, which is his team. He saw that lots of money were spent by different managers on Celtic players as the club is quite dominant.

Over time, he considers that his strategy has evolved a lot. At the same time, some basics do not change, like buying young goalkeepers regularly. He considers that the young goalies have a really good long-term value, and he is waiting for their price to jump in the future as more managers are coming onto the platform. He is still doing the things he has always done, but he is getting superior players to climb the divisions and recently tried to get some Uniques as well, which he now thinks should have been done since the start. It is easy to say now, but when he started, the platform was not as well established as now, so he has no regret.

When he started, as he did not decide to spend a considerable amount of money, the primary target was to build a robust long-term gallery of U23 with a high potential to sell it with a profit. YNWA was constantly cleaning the Unique tournaments, which is still the case today. His strategy was therefore different than the one McBrideAce decided to apply as YNWA was always trying to get the best performers to win really good rewards in all the divisions. McBrideAce was not comfortable with spending thousands on a player, so he decided to buy cheaper players. Even by applying this strategy, he ended up winning two U23 tournaments. When Sorare added the Japan League, it was a great league to scout because the value for the players was excellent, as people did not know the Asian stars.

Now, the strategy is different because the platform proposed a lot of cards. The scoring matrix has also evolved, and finally, the scores required to win are higher due to the number of managers. He considers that he needs a higher average score if he wants to win regularly. If he buys a young player at the moment, it will be mainly to make a profit by selling him later because he cannot beat All-Star teams that have Messi, Mbappé, and Neymar. Moreover, there are more big galleries.

Favorite player

He was one of the first guys he bought and paid around 30$. He brought +20 rewards to him across different teams. In 2020, Sorare minted only 25 cards, more or less. As he moved from Lyon to Nice and scored well, his price was much higher than now. He is the one he used in 90% of game weeks. He could have sold him, but he is still keeping him. That is why it is his favorite card on the platform.

Leagues not covered and the addition of new leagues

He thinks there are some obvious ones that Opta covers and that Sorare will probably add, like Sweden, as we saw teams in Norway and Denmark that came. Opta has the same coverage for all of these countries, and you can find a lot of great players in these countries. There are also controversial ones like Saudi Arabia and Australia. He thinks that Sorare just needs to cover them all. He would not see any problem adding these countries as long as they can provide accurate information regarding the statistics. Moreover, these leagues could play during the summer and would bring more competition to keep people more engaged, as we saw this for MLS and Asia previously.

There are many players going to leagues that are not covered, and some of them even move from leagues such as Eredivisie, where you would have expected them to go to European teams. Ukraine and Shakhtar are not likely to be covered, even if they have some excellent players. So in terms of utility, he considers that there is no opportunity for these cards, but as soon as the players move to covered clubs, they are usually worth more money, so that could be a good strategy. Also, he thinks that if some managers want to apply this strategy, they need to be careful because for “old players” that are 32 or 33 years old, when they move to leagues that are not covered, they may never play again for a club that its league is covered. If you know somebody and want to take the risk, it can pay off as well as you can perform during the summer, for example, and during unusual game weeks.

The most significant impact was when Sorare signed up Paris-Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Ajax, and Liverpool. These big licenses elevated the platform. There were some good teams like Juventus and Atletico Madrid, but getting teams like that was huge. Also, he remembers that one of the biggest booms was when they decided to launch the Dutch league because people quite liked buying the young players that are playing in Ajax, PSV, and Feyenoord. They were not Limited Cards at that point, so people were all buying Rares, and some players' prices are still going up today. The one missing today is the English Premier League, and he thinks the noises are accurate. He does not think that EPL will make a huge difference because there are enough excellent European clubs to be competitive anyway. This addition will be, of course, a big step as, for example, in Asia, many managers are more interested in EPL than in their league. Hopefully, that will be the next one that Sorare will get. It can also be perfect, according to him, to add Championship clubs as some of the teams are performing well and can play in EPL. He does not think that it will make the prices of cards reach the All-Time-Highs as the economic climate is more important than the addition of the most waiting league. If Sorare succeeds in doing that, he thinks it will also bring more confidence from managers. It can be combined with the new feature of Private Leagues, as people would have an excuse to stop FPL from playing Sorare. It would for sure be a key one for the platform.

If this sport is added, he will play golf, but not NBA & MLB. He is not personally interested in these sports or becoming an early adopter, even if he feels that American sports such as NBA could be massive for Sorare. If Formula 1 is added, he will join as he is interested. When NBA came, it was “bad” for football as some managers can now buy cards from another sport. After a few times, things are becoming more established, and inter-sports impact became less critical as time ran out.

His primary focus has been on Celtic recently, and he thinks that the cards were quite expensive when the club came on. From an SO5 point of view, it can be an excellent value to buy Limited Celtic cards for 20 or 30$.

His vision for the next two years

After the Global Cup, we saw excellent feedback, and you may want people to play for free for 3 or 6 months before they spend their money on cards. So if Sorare could add other tournaments, like a half-season one or whatever. 3rd platforms like SorareMega already exist and may be worth considering new game modes.

Cap modes also will bring new opportunities as you can win cards from higher scarcities.

The Private Leagues are filling a new need that will develop.

SO5 has been pretty similar for a while.

As Sorare has added new sports, it seems the other sports launches are going pretty well.

He thinks there will be at least 1 new sport addition in the next two years if it is not 2. He is thinking about golf because it is a game where the top guys that win are not the same every weekend.

He thinks that EPL will be available within the next two years.

He also imagines more couple of millions of users to onboard but not millions to own cards.

Top SO5

• Safonov
• Santos
• Gil
• Jota
• Messi

Bonus questions

Why so many transactions? Is it necessary for a manager to adapt his line-up every game week?

According to him, Sorare is entirely seasonal, so when new cards come, there is a lot of demand as they have the higher XP. Making money by buying and selling at the right point can be interesting. Sorare is still evolving, so a manager has to consider buying and selling to shape a performing gallery. If you want to perform, you have to consider doing transactions often.

Conclusion and recommendations for a new manager joining Sorare

Everybody has seen that the prices can go up and down. The economic climate has impacted the prices, but he considers that Sorare does not have to make the gameplays evolve enough. It can be explained by the launch of Sorare: NBA & Sorare: MLB and the fact that people do not have money at the moment. 2023 will be better than 2022. In February, we usually see the prices increase a bit as the leagues are returning and people have finished paying for all the Christmas gifts. There are still good cards to get for a good value, and as long as people are not overexposed and enjoy the game, that is the most important. Patience is key. He thinks that the market will soon be better.

Now that Sorare has added more leagues and sports, it is easier for them to get new licenses than years ago when it was required to spend a considerable amount without having the user base.

For new managers that want to start, he recommends starting with free-to-play game modes. After understanding the metrics and the scoring, he recommends using the resources available intelligently and SorareData. He advises new managers to be bold and ask for help from the community as if a more experienced manager can accompany them; it is better than going solo. Do not spend too much, and do not use the money you can need later. Spend what you can afford to lose. Be patient and build a long-term gallery. Finally and most importantly, enjoy!