Getting Started on Sorare Fantasy Football

To some, it’s an exciting new fantasy football game. Collectors may look at it as the logical evolution of panini stickers and top trumps cards in the digital world we now live in, while others will view it as a great new platform to trade footballers. Whatever category you fall into, the process of getting started on Sorare is roughly the same. In this beginners Sorare guide, we’ll run through what to expect from your first few days, weeks and months on the platform, finishing off with some handy tips and Sorare strategies that should help get your journey off to a successful start.

This guide was fully updated in February 2023 just after major changes to the Sorare onboarding process, not to mention the addition of Premier League cards and much improved free modes. It will hopefully explain how you progress on Sorare, either as a free user or as somebody looking to buy cards. If you still have questions after reading it, you can get in touch via @sorarelaliga on twitter.

Sorare Guide – Getting Started in 2023

Sign Up

As outlined in our Sorare review, joining the platform is very simple and straightforward. Given this is not technically a gambling platform, there are no long security checks to go through, no bank details to enter and no deposit is required. You don’t even need to enter your name.

Signing up is best done using an affiliate or referral link. Almost every Sorare content creator will have one and in truth it doesn’t really matter which one you use as all come with the same basic offer – one free limited card after your fifth card purchase (from auctions only). You can sign up here to activate this offer and your free card will be added to your gallery if you end up buying five.

Choose your Sport and League

After signing up, the first screen you will see is the sports page. As well as football, you also have basketball (we have a separate Sorare NBA guide) and baseball to choose from. You can play all three from the same account, but assuming you’re mostly here for the football, click “play now” under the football tab.

At this point, you are given a choice of the big five European leagues, all of which are competitions covered by Sorare. It’s not actually that important which one you choose as you can still play the free weekly competitions for all five leagues later. However it’s probably best to pick the one you’re most familiar with initially.

Pick your First Draft

This is the first point where you may actually need to use your brain and football knowledge a bit. Whichever league you choose, you’ll be directed to the draft screen where you must pick eight players that will form your initial squad for your first matchday on Sorare.

As you can see, you have a budget of 400 points to choose from and must select two goalkeepers, two defenders, two midfielders and two forwards. Only five of these players will actually score each matchday but your squad will carry over to each subsequent gameweek with a maximum of two swaps (transfers) permitted before each new round of fixtures.

The points value attached to each player (effectively their price) is taken from their average fantasy score over the last 15 games. In each match, every active player gets a score of between 0 and 100 according to the Sorare points scoring matrix. This works differently and is much more advanced than other fantasy football games with smaller in-game actions such as successful passes, tackles and interceptions rewarded, as well as decisive ones such as goals and assists.

It’ll take a bit of time to get a feel for which types of players score well on Sorare and while there is clearly some correlation with other fantasy games (good players are still good players!), just picking your usual FPL players may not be the smartest way to go. For example, the best scoring Premier League player on Sorare (as of February 2023) is Manchester City’s Rodri, whereas on FPL his lack of decisive actions means he is only the 47th ranked midfielder!

There are various strategies you could use when it comes to your draft picks. You want to find the balance between picking the best five players for the next round of games, whilst also having one eye on future gameweeks. Using fixture difficulty planners such as the Premier League FDR or our LaLiga fixture difficulty chart may help.

There is also something to be said for choosing good players who may have been slightly out of form or just coming back from injuries as their prices will be lower than usual. Whenever you transfer a player out, you only get back his original cost rather than current value (his buy price will go up or down each gameweek as his Last 15 average changes).

It’s also worth noting that you can only pick a maximum of two players from any one team so it’s worth taking a bit of time to think about what the best combinations might be, particularly in leagues where there are one or two really dominant sides.

Pick your Team

Once you have your eight player squad, you’ll be invited to name your first team. All fantasy games on Sorare involve five rather than eleven players and most feature a captain. In the free league-specific competitions, your captain gets a 50% bonus.

You will need to pick a goalkeeper and your outfielders can form a 2-1-1, 1-2-1 or 1-1-2 formation. Note that the three players you don’t pick, do NOT act as substitutes. If one of your players gets injured or doesn’t feature at all, he will score 0. Therefore it’s important you are confident that your 5 players are all going to play and preferably start!

Once you’ve named your team, you’ll have completed the initial onboarding process and will reach the main Sorare interface for the first time. At this point, your card gallery (accessible from the “My Club” menu tab) should have eight common cards – the players you just chose in the draft. By clicking on “Play” you will be able to see the lineup you have submitted and you can go back and edit your choices at any point before the gameweek deadline (Tuesdays & Fridays).

What other tournaments can you enter as a “free” Sorare user?

All tournaments on Sorare are free to enter but without buying any cards (more details on that further down this Sorare beginners guide), you’ll initially be restricted just to common card tournaments.

Common cards do not carry any real value (they can’t be transferred to/from other managers) but you can increase the size of your gallery to 40 common cards by simply repeating the above process and completing the draft and team selection for the other four major European leagues. This can be done from the “Play” tab.

Most weekends during the regular European football season, you’ll therefore be able to submit a team for each of the five common-only amateur tournaments. If you do really well and finish in the top 200, you will win your first Limited card. These are key to progressing on Sorare and will allow you to take the next step on your journey by entering extra tournaments.

However it’s worth noting that actually winning a limited card may take many months or even years given common tournaments currently attract 100,000+ entrants with less than 0.2% of those winning rewards. Without buying a limited card (the cheapest ones sell for as little as €1/£1/$1), you might need to be a bit patient before you can take that next step up the ladder, although there is no limit on how long you can play common tournaments for.

Depositing & Buying Cards

Buying a few cards will fast-track the jump from common to limited tournaments. To do that, you can either deposit funds into your wallet which you can then use to buy players or you can pay for cards directly using a credit card.

Depositing Funds

Sorare is a global platform and the currency it operates on is Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency (although you can opt to also see all prices in FIAT currencies – £, $, € etc). There are no special Sorare tokens.

To deposit Ethereum directly, you will need a separate Ethereum wallet on a cryptocurrency site such as Coinbase or Bitpanda. From there you can deposit ETH into your Sorare account by following the instructions after clicking on the ‘wallet’ icon in the top right of your screen.

If you have no experience with cryptocurrencies and this all sounds a little bit daunting, you can also simply fund your account using a debit card or bank transfer and the sum of your deposit will be converted to ETH.

Buying Cards

There are two main ways to buy player cards on Sorare:

Sorare is constantly releasing new cards onto the market. These can be found by clicking on the ‘Market’ tab on the main menu at the top and selecting ‘New Card Auctions’. The auctions usually run for around 24-72 hours and operate on a simple highest bidder wins basis. You will automatically see the auctions that are nearing completion but there are a range of filters on the left-hand-side which you can use to locate targets.

Secondly, other Sorare managers place the cards they are looking to sell up for sale and you can see these via the ‘Manager Sales’ section under the ‘Market’ tab. It’s probably easier just to use the search tool (located in the top right of your screen near the wallet) to locate the players you are interested in though.

It’s worth noting that players are often listed at inflated prices, so do your research and be sure you’re reasonably confident in your ability to properly value players before diving in here. It does take some time to do this well and there are some useful Sorare tips at the bottom of this post which should help you reach that point quicker.

If you have enough funds in your wallet, you can get any card by simply clicking the “Buy” tab underneath it. However, to get a better deal, most managers make offers below the list price which the other manager can then choose to accept, reject or make a counter offer. To make an offer, click on any card and then click on “Trade” which will open up a box where you can submit your bid.

These are the four scarcities on Sorare that you can buy cards of:

These scarcity cards are fundamentally different to free common cards in that they are actual digital collectibles (NFT’s) and have a maximum number that can be minted in any one season. If you win or buy one, it is yours to keep and use as you wish. You can use it to play in tournaments, sell it to another manager for Ethereum (Sorare’s in-game currency) or maybe even exchange it for another manager’s card.

Given the supply is greater, Limited cards are the cheapest to buy while Uniques are the most expensive with only one minted per season. For most users, Limited cards will be the most logical ones to target next but you don’t have to follow the progression path exactly as Sorare maps it out. Managers with more funds could opt to skip Limiteds altogether and target Rares or Super Rares where both the costs and rewards are greater.

Sorare Progression – Common to Limited

There are several tournaments that bridge the gap between the common and limited tiers of Sorare where you can use a mixture of the two cards. Here is a summary of those tournaments:

This is the point where your head might start to explode as a new user so don’t worry if you don’t instantly take all of this in!

Basically, the first tournament to open up when you win or buy your first Limited card is Semi Pro. This works similarly to the league specific amateur tournaments, in that you pick your five man teams from the eight common cards you have, only this time you have to include one Limited card who will also serve as your captain.

Therefore if your first Limited card is a LaLiga player, LaLiga Semi Pro will open up. Get a Limited card from each of the big five European leagues and you’ll be able to enter five Semi Pro teams each week as well as your five amateur ones. However this tier is only open to managers with less than 10 Limited cards so it will disappear once you reach that point.

As you move to higher tournaments, the potential rewards also get bigger. Once you have 4 Limited cards from one of the big European leagues, Pro 270 will open up for that league. You can still use one common and it’s probably advisable to make that your goalkeeper given they tend to be the most expensive cards to buy. This is also the first cap competition and you will need to select five players within a 270 point budget. Again these points figures relate to a player’s last 15 point average.

Alternatively, you could skip Pro 270 altogether and look at Cap 220 which will most likely be cheaper to compile a team for. That’s partly because the cap is lower so you’ll need lower scoring players who should cost less. You can also use players from any league or country here, as long as it is covered by Sorare and has matches that week.

Therefore, you could for example field a Cap 220 team consisting of Premier League common goalkeeper, a J-League limited defender, an MLS limited midfielder, and a couple of limited forwards from any of the many other European leagues that are covered.

If you’re primarily a fan of one of the smaller leagues, this will be the first point at which you can use your cards. It’s also the last tournament that allows the use of a common card which aren’t allowed according to Sorare rules above this point.

Sorare Progression – Limited Only Tournaments

As mentioned before, you can still keep playing the common tournaments (with the exception of Semi Pro which goes invisible after you buy 10 Limiteds) even as you move up the Sorare ladder. A bunch of different Limited tournaments will be your next port of call, although remember you don’t have to play every single tournament to progress as you’ll need a really large gallery to do that!

When buying cards and constructing your galleries, you want to think about which tournaments to target and not all of them open all year-round. For example Asia is closed throughout the winter months while most European tournaments don’t run during the summer.

Limited-only tournaments offer greater freedom to pick players from any league with no league restrictions on the cap, all-star or Under-23 competitions which are truly global. You can though opt to target a specific region if you have a deeper knowledge of football in one country or part of the world that you think will give you an edge.

All of these tournaments have Limited cards on offer as rewards and you stand a far greater chance of winning cards than in the Common tournaments. Some tournaments also offer Ethereum prizes for podium places, but the most interesting for new users playing Sorare on a low budget may be the Cap 240 mode.

Here you just need to hit a very attainable score of 250 points to win $5 worth of ETH. That may not sound like a lot, but you can easily buy another budget card or two with that and it can quickly build given you have a decent chance of competing for that $5 threshold payment every week and potentially twice per week when there are midweek fixtures.

At the time of writing, Cap 240 and Cap 270 tournaments also offer you the chance to win Rare cards which will enable you to make that next big leap on Sorare.

Sorare Progression – Limited to Rare

Coming Soon!

Sorare Progression – Rare Only Tournaments

Coming Soon!

Selling Cards & Trading

You won’t need to know much about selling cards initially but will probably begin to see how it works from your experiences of buying your first cards. Depending on your strategy, it may not be too long before you need to sell players.

If you’re more trading focused or are starting on a small budget, buying cheap undervalued cards and selling for a profit can quickly help you build a bigger ETH balance. Even if you’re not looking to do that, you may start to receive offers from other managers which can be viewed by clicking on ‘Offers received’ under the ‘My Club’ tab at the top.

If you’re actively looking to sell a card, you can significantly encourage these offers by listing your players as for sale. To do this, first go to ‘My Club’ in the main menu and then click on ‘My Cards’. This is probably the most important screen on Sorare as it shows your entire collection. To list a player, click on the card you are looking to sell, click ‘List my card’, set your asking price and then it’ll be listed in the transfer market for 48 hours. You can simply relist him at any point if he doesn’t sell and the 48 hour timer will reset.

You’ll get a notification if someone buys the card or makes an offer on it. Before setting your asking price, you may want to go to that player’s screen and see what price other managers have listed him at. You’re unlikely to attract many offers unless you list your card at a competitive price.

5 Quick Sorare Tips for Beginners

1. Train your Players – Each gameweek, it’s worth entering all your players in the training leagues unless they are being used in the main tournaments. Even if they don’t have a match, they will still earn something called XP which gradually increases the power and ultimately the value of a card over time. You can submit training teams via the ‘mix’ tab in the ‘Play’ section.
2. Scout Players & Use SorareData – By far the best tool for scouting and trying to value players is SorareData. Completely free to use, it offers far more info on each player than you get on Sorare itself and you’ll be able to see what fantasy scores everyone has posted over the last 40 games and see every price they’ve previously been exchanged at. In the early phase of deciding your targets, you may end up spending more time here than on Sorare itself and while it can be time-consuming, proper scouting can really reap rewards in the long-term.
3. Find your Edge – This is a global platform with football in more than 20 different countries covered. That creates a really unique environment and if you are extremely knowledgeable about one of the less popular leagues, you can find a real edge. Few managers on Sorare are experts on the K-League or J-League but many still regularly buy and sell Asian players and enter the Asian tournaments. Even if you’re not, you may wish to decide to really get into one of the smaller leagues, watch some matches and educate yourself. It shouldn’t be long before you have an advantage on the market and it’s also worth noting that many players in Asia and the Americas actually score better than some of the elite stars in Europe, but can often be bought much cheaper.
4. Take Advantage of Short-Termism – There is a large amount of short-term thinking on Sorare with managers often purely focused on ensuring they have the right cards to field teams on the next matchday rather than looking at the bigger picture. If you’re willing to play the longer game, buying players out of season, or merely those who are injured or out of form is a strategy that can really pay off. Typically, players skyrocket in value when they hit form or as the start of their respective seasons draws close. With proper scouting and research, you can really take advantage of these kinds of shifts and in a rapidly growing market, big returns are possible in the space of just a few months if you get it right!
5. Be Careful with Decimal Points! – This may sound obvious but you’d be surprised how often players are sold for 10 times their value, just because somebody has mistakenly typed 0.2 ETH instead of 0.02 (the difference between 60 & 600 US Dollars at the time of writing). Don’t be that guy or girl! Also be wary of a few managers who deliberately offer at 10% of the going rate in an attempt to trick people into selling. There is a block button. Don’t be afraid to use it.

You may also want to check this piece on Sorare predictions for 2023 as it promises to be another exciting year on the platform.

This Sorare guide contains affiliate links to Sorare and was last updated in February 2023. Future changes to the sign up process and tournament structures may occur but this guide comes after major alterations to both in January 2023. Do your own research before putting any money into the platform!