Andrew Laird, on the SorareData show, shared a very interesting number with us last week.
37,500 different managers submitting at least one line-up.
In previous articles and analysis I’ve estimated this number to sit between 40,000–50,000 so not too far away. Note the gameweek referenced had pretty much full fixtures across all leagues so we can expect this is close to the current max. Which begs the question in relation to 5+ card owners totaling over 150,000 — what are the other 100,000+ card owners who could enter a line-up doing with their cards? Dormant accounts? Purely collectors?
Anyway, that isn’t the main theme of this article, neither is another talking point that has arisen in recent days and was also discussed on the SorareData show with Keith on Tuesday — Super Rares, and more generally the balancing act across scarcities. But we’ll cover that within too.
On that note — a slightly crazy idea, given the current situation, with the caveat that things could change/revert back as things grow and develop: remove Super Rare competitions altogether for now. Bring back the scarcity bonuses, allow two Super Rares in Rare competition line-ups and three Super Rares in Unique competition line-ups, bolstering those respective prize pools until a point where Super Rares are more in demand (and as a knock-on effect Uniques are too). At which stage Sorare can re-introduce Super Rare competitions. That could be one year, two years or five years away — who knows. Anyway, I’m not getting into that one now!
I’ve attempted to redistribute cash prize-pools in a more equitable manner. Note I am staying away from boxes and card rewards, mainly the classic competitions — that’s a whole other minefield I’m neither prepared for, nor have the time to venture into right now. I’m aware Sorare have tweaked things for GW473 which certainly looks an improvement, but if anything maybe this article can give you an insight into how Sorare *might* think about things, or my theory anyway, and how it could be a little bit better 🙂.
I can imagine this might ruffle a few feathers, and if it doesn’t suit your gallery, you’re probably not going to love it, but the justification is based on a number of factors:
- Scarcity revenue share/potential for Sorare
- Current size of playing pools per scarcity
- Scarcity price levels
- Region revenue share/potential for Sorare
- Licensed vs unlicensed player/club coverage
- Division importance
- In-Season vs Classic vs U23 ratio
- Legacy setup, allowing for user expectations (subjective but relevant) and trying to not rock the boat too much.
- Subtle changes to incentivise will to progress up scarcities (spend more)
What’s not taken into account is the cost to Sorare. We can assume the J-league license is a fraction of the price compared to the Premier League license, but without enough details I have left this out of the equation for now. We’ll just assume we’ve got some loss leaders on one end and some cash cows on the other.
Starting with the first three as I briefly addressed at the beginning of this piece: scarcity revenue share/potential for Sorare, current size of playing pools per scarcity and scarcity price levels.
Based on sales over the last twelve months, the average Unique card price is 487x the average Limited card price. A Super Rare is 43x. I don’t think anyone is claiming prize pools for Super Rare should be 43x that of Limited (or at least I hope not), but where does the balance come in?
Here’s an overview from June 1st 2023 up to April 30 2024.
I know it’s only eleven months, but for arguments sake I’m calling it a year. Interestingly if we isolate the month of June 2023, we see Unique’s losing the most as a percentage of total (dropping from 17.1% for June 2023 to 16.4% for the whole year up to now). Super Rare drops from 20.8% to 20.1% and Limited drops from 25.4% to 25.1%. That all means of course Rare has grown it’s share from 36.7% to 38.4%. Rare was already the “most attractive scarcity” but seems to have increased it’s lead. HOWEVER, equally as interesting — if we look at the most recent month of April 2024, Limited sits at 30% (+5% more than the year average), Rare at 33.1% (-5.4%), Super Rare at 17.1% (-3%) and Unique up to 19.8% (+3.4%). Perhaps Limited is becoming the “on-trend” scarcity.
Whatever way you want to skin it, Rare is clearly the best revenue generating scarcity for Sorare at 38%, quite a way ahead of Limited at 25%, followed by Super Rare at 20% and Unique at only 16%. But that’s not the whole picture. How many users are playing in each scarcity and buying these respective cards?
For this I used the most popular competition for the past twelve months, which has been Cap 240, and extrapolated out a little further than that to allow for some players only playing in one other competition. This is more of a guesstimate and related to the numbers Laird recently shared: 37,500 total unique managers entering SO5 competitions.
So two thirds play in Limited, 40% play in Rare, ~5% play in Super Rare and less than 1% play in Unique. By the law of averages and assuming all else equal, it is 100x more difficult to win a limited division than it is a Unique division purely based on entries. Should the Limited prize pool then reward 100x better than the Unique prize pool? Well of course not, that would be ridiculous. But if you remember a similar question a few paragraphs earlier relating to average card prices and combine the earnings share per scarcity for Sorare we have our first three weightings used to define prize pools. We also need to consider the number of divisions here as well as positions paid out.
Here’s how Sorare have it for GW473, alongside the % of revenue earned (notice how close those numbers are?) and the last column is my suggestion based on the weightings and factors described above.
Now some may argue it’s a chicken and egg scenario. That Rare makes up so much of the revenue because that’s where the best “value for money” prize pools are. While I can see that side and Sorare could take a risk and aim to shift this significantly, I don’t truly believe it’s the case as the majority of users simply fall into propensity to spend buckets. If Super Rare & Unique prize pools tripled overnight, Limited players aren’t going to deposit more, simply because their disposable income, risk appetite and general desire for the game more so dictates at what level they can play at, for the most part. To me, it’s natural that there are 100x as many limited players as unique players, not because of scarcity card numbers, but because the market is far larger.
As you can see, my weightings ratio works out to give slightly more share to Super Rare and Unique than Sorare currently do and reduce the Limited & Rare portions.
I then looked at region earnings share/potential for Sorare (Champion vs Challenger vs Contender vs Premier League vs Bundesliga vs La Liga) as well as the number of licensed AND unlicensed players within each region.
Unlicensed are considered here only partially, as they are no longer revenue generating for Sorare, but are more so loss leaders that users still wish to use in the regional tournaments they’re eligible for.
I won’t bore you with the details, but within this I considered licensed clubs per league, total clubs per league covered, licensed clubs per region and uncovered players previously minted per league & region. Then lastly, admittedly a somewhat subjective one, league importance to Sorare for all leagues covered (including those with no licensed clubs). i.e. Premier League holds more importance and significance for the business than smaller leagues. This lands us at a co-efficient for each of the six regions where In-Season tournaments will take place, to add into our overall weighting for prize-pools. Each league of course has it’s own co-efficient if some leagues are playing when others aren’t, allowing for adjusting of prize pools on busier vs quieter GWs.
Here’s the result, when all leagues are active, which says Champion should have the largest prize pool of the six, Contender should have the smallest but as you can see the range is fairly small, from 15.4% to 17.9%. As above, I’ve put it alongside Sorare’s current split for GW473 (remember Bundesliga and La Liga tournaments not yet launched).
Then, a hotly debated topic over the last few weeks — division importance.
Sorare have just this week addressed this and shifted things around when it comes to promotion & relegation, as well as bolstering the prize pools in the higher divisions. On average this has bolstered Division 1 by 20% on average across Limited, Rare and Super Rare, Division 2 by 6%, while Division 3, 4 & 5 in their respective scarcities have all been reduced by 22–24%. This is a positive step and brings this closer to my proposal. I also note, taking Champion Rare Division 1 as an example, paid places jump from 45 to 65 from previous weeks to GW473. The proposal below would pay 100 places in this division.
Looking at GW473, their split is as follows:
And here’s my take on it, as you can see it’s quite similar (thanks to the update for GW473 onwards — I did the bulk of this work before that announcement). Limited D1, D2 & D3 all see a bit more, for Rare D1 & D2 see more, while Super Rare D2 sees more.
By the way, if you didn’t catch my last piece – I suggested a slightly different format to the weekly promotion & relegation, using a rolling 8-week average. Suggestion would be that this is incorporated here too, you can read it here.
I’ve also had a go at positions paid out. It’s far too large to share in this format but if anyone happens to read this far and wants a copy I’m happy to share the percentage splits down to position, e.g. what does 150th position in Limited Challenger D2 get. The idea here is that users WANT to be in the highest division possible, as it should be the best opportunity of earning the most amount on a weekly basis.
Classic & U23
I haven’t changed the setup for Classic, only the percentage distribution — in this version, I still believe podiums in Division 1 for each competition should be rewarded with cash prizes, and then they are tiered accordingly by scarcity. Classic Competitions in this scenario would be entitled to a share of 8% of the weekly prize pools. That sounds small, but remember it’s shared amongst 72 winners each week (3 podium spots x 6 competitions/regions x 4 scarcities), compared to >5000 cash winners within the In-Season tournaments.
When it comes to U23, I have made an estimate on the number of U23 players as a percentage of all players on the platform, and based on only paying podiums in D1 here, as classic competitions. Of course there are only four paying divisions here, and so U23 in this scenario would be entitled to 3% of the weekly prize pool, tiered accordingly by scarcity.
As mentioned, I’ve tried to temper this with some human touch, understanding user expectations, and experience from playing the game myself for over three years. I understand this part is highly subjective, and some may disagree, but hopefully most understand that I’m not writing this from a personal gain perspective, but rather as a wider benefit to the game, hopefully as a whole.
As mentioned, the overall sheet is big and clunky (I don’t envy the Sorare team doing this exercise for reward boxes and card rewards!), but to give you an example, here’s a snapshot of a few scarcity x region x divisions and what % of the overall pot they would see.
I’m working this out in percentages only. It’s anyone’s guess what prize pool sizes look like come August, with the anticipated removal of cap modes and All Star, and the introduction of Bundesliga and La Liga Competitions. For clarity, the size of weekend prize pools excluding Specials (MLS, J-League etc.) between 463–473 when all leagues have been active comes in at around $234,000. I estimate Cap 240 payouts over this period for weekend GWs have come in at around $110,000.Side note — that’s a significant improvement since the transition period began, where PvE was floating around 60–75%, it’s now at ~30%.
In the last 3–4 calendar weeks, Sorare have “redistributed”/paid-out roughly 50% of their income via cash prizes (this comes in around 40% for the year on average). If I was a betting man, I’d say that’s still on the high side for Sorare and they would ideally want things around the 30% range. Of course seasonality comes into it, and primary market revenues have trended downwards in recent weeks. If speculation is to be believed, we could well see a strong ratio in Sorare’s favour come August and September, so the last few weeks or months aren’t necessarily an indication for the future.
In summary, this could very well be a wasted exercise as it seems Sorare have made changes, and they clearly have better data at their fingertips and smarter people than me working on it, but hopefully it gives you a bit of an insight into why prize-pools are the way they are! Of course, if we removed the Super Rare divisions completely, things might look quite different 😉
