As we reach the end of June, it seems a good time to reflect on what’s happened in the Sorare universe since the main European leagues stopped for the summer break.

It’s easy to see this period as a quieter time on the platform with less to get actively engaged in – and it certainly has been for me at least. At the same time though, the Sorare team have been quietly working away in the background, getting stuff done.

Global Nations

June saw the first ever roll out of the new Global Nations tournaments on Sorare, encompassing players involved in the Euros and in the Copa America. Having a chance to get involved in these games is undeniably good for Sorare – it would have been more than a bit odd to have players involved in the Euros without any way of using them in SO5 – but it’s been hard for most of us to field a full team.

My collection is just shy of 100 cards but even I struggled. I did manage to get one full team out without DNPs but my motley crew weren’t good enough to land me a reward, even with Dumfries putting in an excellent performance.

In the end, with DNPs hanging over my head, I decided to focus my energies on the ETH reward in Global All Stars instead and have added 0.04 ETH to my wallet balance in June as a result (with one more gameweek to finish).

Well done to anyone who has managed to get some special rewards from the Global Nations tournaments so far!

NAtional Teams

One of the big obstacles to managers performing well in Global Nations is the limited number of eligible players in the game. It was only a matter of time before Sorare did something about that and brought on board some of the national teams. I don’t think we should underestimate how difficult that negotiation must have been and the kind of marker that it puts down for Sorare as the premier NFT football/soccer proposition in the world currently.

France were released first, followed by Germany and then Belgium. I imagine there are more around the corner too (Netherlands, Italy… England maybe???) and although it’s a shame we couldn’t get these cards out ahead of the Euros, it does set things up nicely for the World Cup next year. Plus, a lot of the card are going to be pretty useful in SO5 outside of the Euros so there’s plenty of motivation to add them to your collection while you can.

I haven’t got involved in the auctions yet. The initial prices were really high and I’m still trying to exercise a little bit of caution when it comes to putting extra money into the platform so I’ve not dipped into my wallet since the end of May. I’d rather wait until things simmer down a bit after the Euros and aim to pick players up a little cheaper on the transfer market. Sitting on your hands when you see others wading in is hard and I can appreciate how this only adds to the debate about how to support managers on smaller budgets to get the most out of the game.

Expensive or not, the FOMO is real, especially seeing ETH dropping nice and low… the temptation of picking up limited run players is particularly hard to ignore.

On that subject, it’s hard to predict which new teams will join Sorare and when this will happen but there seems to have been bigger hurdles to getting Premier League clubs licensed in the past so I’d be looking closely at any national players that play their domestic football in the EPL (particularly Manchester City players as they already have an NFT partnership with Animoca Brands).

If you do want to take the plunge, there is a Germany/Belgium power hour on the auctions tonight (27th June)…

MLSPA Part 2 and NOB

Away from the Euro scene, the MLS is back in full-flow after a short break and Sorare launched 100 new MLS players during June, filling some obvious roster gaps. We also saw the introduction of Argentinian team Newell’s Old Boys.

Any new card drops always have some managers worrying about oversupply. That’s a valid concern but I don’t think we’re there yet. With around 300,000 cards minted and over 20,000 managers , there should still enough scarcity to keep prices stable. It’s important to remember that all cards have a price – you just have to be willing to set your price low enough to tempt a buyer.

I’ve had limited success in Champion America this month with some unexpected DNPs and poor performances derailing my teams. I did however manage to scrape a Tier 3 reward last gameweek and pulled a guy called Justen Glad from Real Salt Lake. He scored a goal in his last game, has an SO5 L5 average of 50 and is selling for around 0.045 ETH, which is about £60. I’m going to hold him back for a future giveaway on my Twitter account so look out for that.

SALES VOLUME, Marketing and profile raising

Sales look strong for the month, helped by some of the national cards going for hair-raising prices. Sorare sits in 4th place for volume in the games category on DappRadar for the past 30 days and in 25th place based on the number of users.

Sorare, and NFTs in general, are still a bit of a niche market. I’ve been watching to see what Sorare are doing to generate interest in the product and drive traffic to the site.

The launch of the national sides sent a bit of a ripple across those countries and this was picked up by some crypto and football media outlets. People have also noticed that national players like Griezmann, Dembele and Werner are playing Sorare themselves, which can only help to put more eyes on the product.

There’s also a recurring rumour that Sorare are on the verge of receiving another sizeable cash investment. The team have not confirmed this so it may be simply the rumour mill running on overtime but, either way, it’s all good for getting Sorare onto people’s radars.

Google searches for ‘Sorare’ peaked at the beginning of March and then dropped back a bit as NFT fever subsided but seem to have picked up a little since the launch of the national sides. I’ve heard that there has been some engagement with influencers and streamers to promote Sorare but I’ve not seen much evidence of that if I’m honest. Even without that though, there’s no doubt that Sorare continues to occupy first spot in the football/soccer NFT space, with nothing else coming close at the moment.

There’s still a long way to go though so hopefully there’s some serious marketing planned in to coincide with the start of the European seasons. I have a feeling that things are really going to start hotting up in July and August.

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