The yearly review of our Global Fantasy Football game
A Landmark Year for NFTs and Sorare
2021 was a landmark year for Sorare. NFTs broke into the mainstream and sports fans all over the world turned to Web3 for new and transformative digital experiences.
Since Day 1, we have been pioneers paving the way for the nascent technology to reach a global audience. Our core concept of creating NFTs with utility is merging digital and real world experiences. As our CEO Nicolas best put it:
“We want to build the next sports entertainment giant by helping the billions of sports fans own their game and become stakeholders rather than stay spectators.”
We’re just getting started. Join us on our 2021 stadium tour as we revisit key moments in our season. 🏟️
🌍 Sorare Fantasy Football Goes Global
In 2021 the Sorare family more than doubled. With 228 officially licensed clubs our partnerships now extend across 20 different leagues around the world. The launches of LaLiga and the German Bundesliga welcomed two of the legendary football leagues and cemented Sorare’s future as the leading NFT fantasy football product on the market.
With each club launch we expand Sorare’s global appeal and introduce our unique fantasy experience to new football fans. We now have Sorare Managers from over 190 countries in the world. 🗺️
That’s not all! Ahead of next year’s World Cup, we also expanded into International football. In the Summer of 2021 we welcomed Belgium, France, and Germany National Team cards and launched our coverage of international fixtures for the first time ever!
Next up is the African Cup of Nations — are you ready?
From Paris to New York 🛫
The Sorare team started the year one short of a full 11 aside team. Thanks to our scouting network, we welcomed 24 new faces to the squad. In October we announced our first wave of leaders who bring vast and world-class experience to the Sorare pitch.
We also opened our New York office, strengthening our hiring plans and foothold in the US market.
But this is just the beginning. By the end of 2022 we plan to have a team of 200.
If you’re interested please check out our open positions.
Building the foundations for mainstream adoption
We knew that NFT platforms would explode in popularity, we just didn’t think it would happen so soon. We quickly accelerated our plans to make Sorare a more accessible and seamless experience for Managers that were waiting to launch their Sorare journeys.
Migrating to Starkware — A Layer 2 Solution
In July we successfully launched our new scaling solution on Ethereum with Starkware. In doing so, we removed high transaction costs and unpredictable delays with card transfers and trades.
With Starkware we built an Ethereum Z-K roll-up that allowed us to remove the friction that comes with Ethereum gas-fees while maintaining the security of your cards.
Most importantly, this opened the door for our new scarcity.
A New Scarcity and Era
Migrating to a Layer 2 solution allowed us to introduce our first ever scarcity since launching in 2019.
The dawn of a New Era:
Name: Limited
Colour: Yellow
Scarcity: 1/1000
Debut season: 2021/22
The Limited cards marked a new era for Sorare, our community and the many football fans waiting in the wings to join the Global fantasy football movement.
Our Community continues to drive us forward!
Once again, it’s our community that stole the show and captained us from the sidelines with your feedback and incredible passion for the game. Sorare creators are raising the bar and setting new standards for football content and we saw our first ever community meet-ups with trips to MLSPA and LaLiga fixtures.
Community platforms like SorareData, SorareMega, FFS Academy and many more continue to unlock the potential of an open world where football fans can experience true NFT ownership.
We can’t wait to see what you do next!
2021 Quick Stats ⏩
Here’s a fast round of 2021 stats for our Hall of Fame!
🏆 2021 Managers Hall of Fame: The Highest SO5 score by a Manager in each region / tournament / division in 2021
🤝 Sergio Padt 2020 Rare 13: A record 20 different card owners.
❤️ Most followed player: Kylian Mbappé 287,615 Followers
❤️ Most followed Sorare Manager: Antoine Griezmann (Grizou) – 3898 Followers
🌐 Game Week 225: A record 83,034 Casual League Manager compete
🔥 75 312 owners of at least 1 Sorare NFT.
🗺️ Managers from 203 different countries / territories played Sorare in 2021.
Backed by a world-class team and record-breaking investment
To deliver on our vision we raised a $50 million Series A funding in February. If this was a big leap towards making our dream a reality, our Series B announcement was a record-breaking, monumental Olympic long jump. We are now in a position to hire the best, build the best and be the next sports entertainment giant.
What else happened?
We permanently opened up the Casual League, introduced Legends cards, MySorare, Achievements, club banners, and a new reward system. We built our first ever Help Centre, dropped our first ever Rookie, LaLiga Ticket and Champion Edition cards, posted Sorare merch to over 100 Managers, expanded our coverage into new leagues and tournaments and much much more.
This is just the beginning
But we’ve only just begun! With the solid foundations we have built together this year, we are ready to bring Sorare to the masses in 2022. Our focus remains on the core product and introducing a new game design that brings more strategy and fun to your fantasy experience.
Here’s just a bit of what you can expect in 2022:
- New leagues and clubs (of course!)
- Sorare’s Mobile App
- Improved gameplay
- Legends utility
- A new Market experience
- Community meet-ups
- More NFTs that unlock real-word experience and VIP access
A huge thank you to our community for your continued passion and support for what we are achieving together. Reading your Sorare stories everyday is what drives us forward. Have a great end to the New Year and catch you in 2022!
In the meantime, keep an eye out next week for our Player Of The Year cards.👀
Sorare 2021 Year in Review was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
