Sorare Review & Sign Up Offer

This Sorare review, updated ahead of the 2024/25 season in Europe, will give you the lowdown on the popular global fantasy football game. We’ll try to highlight both the positive and negative things about it to give you an idea of what it’s like to be a manager. We also have a Sorare sign up offer, which will help you get started with a special Sorare discount for new users.

This review via @Sorarelaliga, who has been using the platform for more than three and a half years, relates to the main version of Sorare football, as opposed to Sorare rivals – effectively the free version of the game. Both baseball and basketball were also added to the platform in 2022, but this will be strictly a Sorare football review.

Sorare is really easy to join and get going with no long forms to fill out. Using this Sorare sign up offer, you’ll be rewarded with $/£/€50 of credits that can be used to buy Pro cards (T&C’s apply).

This will help you kick off your Sorare journey in the 2024/25 European season which will feature some significant changes to how Sorare football works which we’ll cover below.

What is Sorare?

Sorare is a global fantasy football platform. Its gameplay is based on real on-pitch events in football matches across the world including the biggest leagues and tournaments in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.

Managers need to collect cards (footballers) in order to enter fantasy competitions and compete for prizes which include substantial cash prizes. All competitions on Sorare are free to enter, but you’ll need at least five cards before you have enough players to field a lineup.

These digital cards can be bought, sold and exchanged with other managers, as well as won by playing the weekend and midweek competitions. They come in four scarcity levels – limited cards (the cheapest with up to 1000 issued per player per season), rare (100), super rare (10) and unique (only one per player per season).

Each scarcity level has its own competitions with the limited ones being the most affordable option for beginners to get stuck into.

How does Sorare work?

It does take some time to get used to Sorare and to fully understand the different rules, gameplay modes and league structures. However it has improved considerably over the past year or so with a simpler set-up and more engaging free version which is a good starting point if you don’t want to commit to putting any money in yet.

If you’re somebody who signed up to Sorare in the past but quickly lost interest, it may be worth giving it another look, particularly with the recent addition of a cash wallet making it much easier to deposit funds and buy cards in the Pro version of the game.

Sorare gameplay

Here’s a brief explanation of how the Sorare gameplay basics work:

The lifeblood of the platform consists of the fantasy football competitions where managers enter teams of five players that each earn points (from 0 to 100) based on their performances in real football matches. To pick a player, you must own their card at the relevant scarcity level.

These teams must consist of:

• 1 Goalkeeper
• 1 Defender
• 1 Midfielder
• 1 Forward
• 1 Extra Player (any outfielder)

You can also nominate a captain in most competitions who will earn a bonus. There are also small “XP bonuses” which grow the more you hold and use a card, as well as when you build larger club collections from individual seasons.

As a beginner, you don’t need to worry too much about this yet, but these bonuses can build up over time and act as a differential when your team scores a similar amount to the lineups of other managers.

The base points score of 0-100 that every player in your lineup receives is determined by the Sorare scoring matrix. It may be worth having a quick look through but you’ll get a better feel for which types of players score well the more gameweeks you play (there are two Sorare gameweeks each week for midweek and weekend action with team selection deadlines on Tuesday and Friday afternoons – European time).

Essentially it works in a similar way to other fantasy football style games, however it doesn’t just focus on one league. It also uses much more advanced metrics to calculate each individual score than Fantasy Premier League (FPL) for example. Everything from goals and assists to completed passes, clearances and even penalty area entries improve your player’s score. However cards, missed chances and lost duels are among the things that will decrease the score. Match data is provided by Opta.

Sorare competition structure 2024/25

Sorare’s league coverage grew considerably in 2022 and, at the time of writing, there are 372 officially licensed clubs including all the top flight clubs in England and Spain.

From August 2024 onwards, old competition formats such as capped modes have been replaced with three major tiers – Champion, Challenger and Contender. For each of the scarcity levels, managers can field lineups in any of those three competitions by selecting players in action in any of the relevant leagues each matchday.

There are also additional competitions for LaLiga, the Premier League and the Bundesliga while the U23 competition remains, enabling managers to pick young players from any of the covered leagues on Sorare. There will also be many special weeklies each month where additional matches such as those in the Champions League, Europa League and international matches will be covered.

Most of the competitions will also be broken up into divisions where promotion and relegation is possible each week. Managers will in theory want to target the higher divisions which offer higher rewards.

In season vs classic – Cards, competitions & rewards

Another new introduction on Sorare in 2024 is the breaking up of competitions into “in season” and “classic”. The in season offerings will feature cash prizes whereas classic competitions will mostly reward cards.

To enter in season competitions, you’ll need four or more in season cards (cards from the present season) at the limited and rare scarcity levels (three at super rare and unique). In season cards will typically be more expensive to buy as a result given they offer the chance to win cash prizes.

Cards from any season can be used in classic competitions, but you’ll still win in season cards as rewards if you do well which can then be used or sold.

As a Sorare newbie, it’s important to understand that older cards can still be very useful. Even if the player has since transferred to a different club, even in another country, you can still field his card as normal providing he still plays in one of the covered leagues detailed above.

For example a 2019/20 card can still be used in the 2024/25 or even 2030/31 campaign in classic competitions or as your designated classic card in an in season competition. The main scenarios where a card may become unplayable are in the event of that player’s retirement, his team’s relegation or a transfer to a non-covered league – the most notable of which is the big-spending Saudi Pro League.

Sorare review – Positives & negatives

Sorare has built up an active and engaged community of hundreds of thousands of fantasy football managers, most of whom are passionate and positive about it. However, it’s safe to say that like many projects using NFT and blockchain technology, there are skeptics out there too and Sorare’s journey has been a bumpy one over the past couple of years, after a period of enormous growth following its initial release in 2019.

If you’re only interested in the free-to-play version where there are no risks attached, it’ll be simpler to just join Sorare and start playing Sorare Rivals, which is a simplified version of the full game.

If you’re considering putting money in, buying some Pro cards and trying to build competitive lineups, then you may want to do a bit more research into Sorare. This section may help highlight some of the pros and cons:

Things to like about Sorare

Anyone, anywhere can use Sorare. You can use your local knowledge or interest in specific leagues to gain an edge and can be part of a global community of passionate football fans. Sorare has registered users from almost every country in the world and being a Sorare manager can open up all sorts of opportunities to travel, watch football, maybe meet other managers and feel part of a big, football-mad community.

• It truly rewards football knowledge and scouting

With players in the Peruvian and Japanese leagues just as likely to earn points and win rewards as those in Serie A or LaLiga, anyone willing to put some time into scouting players and researching smaller teams, can often find a genuine edge. With a far more interesting and complex scoring matrix than Fantasy Premier League for example (not to mention much better prizes that are far easier to win!), there’s also an opportunity for data nerds to get stuck into the numbers and figure out who the best value players are.

• You don’t need a huge amount of money to get started

It’s certainly possible to put together a limited team that can at least compete for rewards in one of the limited competitions for well under $100.

However it’s true that having better cards, and analysing things like team news and fixture difficulties, will radically increase your chances of winning better prizes. If you can’t afford a full team to start out with, you can also simply try to trade your way up to the point where you have enough cards to field a lineup, although that’s likely to take a fair while unless you’re a really talented trader.

Sorare’s prizes extend way beyond the game and can open up all sorts of opportunities to watch football and meet the stars. From VIP tickets to signed shirts, there are loads of cool prizes that can be won on Sorare in addition to the cash and card prizes.

There are also some truly unique experiences on offer. For example, the winners of the 2022 Global Cup (during the 2022 World Cup) were rewarded by getting the chance to play five-a-side football with the legendary Zinedine Zidane!

Things new users should bear in mind

• Not all players & clubs are on Sorare

While the coverage has grown significantly and the Premier League joining in early 2023 filled the most obvious glaring hole that was on Sorare, there are still a few gaps here and there. Not all of the covered leagues (outlined above) have every single club licensed for the 2024/25 season, although most of the big names are there.

This is more likely to be a frustration if you’re a fan of a club or a league that isn’t fully licensed. That being said, it can often be possible to find many of your desired players from previous season’s cards if they used to play for a fully licensed club. They can still be used in Sorare’s competitions regardless of what jersey they are wearing on the card.

• The future of NFTs is the source of much debate

You can now play Sorare using cash (it previously ran only using the cryptocurrency Ethereum) and don’t need to know anything about NFTs to play and enjoy the game. However the underlying technology that Sorare is built on is known as the blockchain and cards come in the form of digital collectibles (NFTs).

There are people who see them as a huge part of the future world as we move further into the digital age. There are others who see them as a huge fad. Sorare has protected themselves against the latter scenario by building a game that already feels like it has mass appeal with the vast majority of users there to play fantasy football rather than collect NFTs.

The value of cards (and therefore your collection) can increase and decrease quite rapidly at times, for a number of reasons. The biggest determining factor is still how well a player is doing on the pitch. Somebody who fires in three 90+ scores in a row will most likely go up in value, whereas a player who gets dropped or injured and spends several gameweeks on the bench will almost certainly lose value.

The overall trend over the past couple of years has been for cards to fall significantly in value though, following the initial NFT boom around 2021. It’s impossible for anyone to say how long that decline will last or whether Sorare will be able to attract a wave of new managers so that the demand for cards matches or exceeds the ever-increasing supply.

• Threshold payments are gone!

If you’re somebody who used Sorare before, but has lost interest for whatever reason, it’s worth pointing out that from August 2024 onwards, there will be no more threshold payments. These were previously paid out to managers who exceeded a certain points threshold in specific competitions and offered a way for managers to steadily grow their balance.

Sorare has promised to redistribute those rewards into the other competitions with more than $15,000,000 in cash prizes on offer during the 2024/25 season.

Sorare FAQ’s

Is Sorare free?

All competitions on Sorare are free to enter. However, to enter most of them, you will need to spend money on buying cards. The only exception is Sorare Rivals which can be played without any Pro cards, but offers much more limited opportunities to win rewards.

Is Sorare legit?

Sorare has grown in a very short space of time and was valued at $4.3bn in 2021 after it secured record-breaking funding. Since then, it has opened an office in New York in addition to its existing Paris base and partnered with huge global stars including Leo Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Serena Williams.

In short, it’s very much a legit company but one operating in a new sector using a new technology whose future uses are not yet fully known or understood. It’s impossible for anyone to know how much or how little Sorare cards will be worth in two, five or ten years’ time.