What's going on Sorare?
This is my no bullshit, transparent update on the state of Sorare - the platform we love. The platform that makes you feel like a team owner, that brings you closer to the sport you love and that rewards you for being a superfan!
I’ve been on the ground for the past few weeks as I'm back leading the product team. It has been very exciting to resume user interviewing, design reviews and product building. I'm hyped by the groundbreaking progress we'll introduce to Sorare in the coming weeks and months and convinced it will allow Sorare to reach even more sports fans around the world.
I’ve also realised that lots of the areas we've been progressing on are not really visible for you, our community. And so I wanted to share some of those progress directly with you in our path to build the biggest brand in the world of sport gaming.
Let's get started:
Gameplay
We're focusing on a couple of high impact initiatives:
- Release Rivals, a mobile-first, social game mode that is going to be absolute 🔥
- Improving Sorare Pro (tournament structure, rewards, shop, mobile)
- Deliver a meta-progression level that reflects and rewards long term success of our Managers.
You can expect a roadmap update as soon as next week.
Market
We are looking very closely at the long term sustainability for Primary Cards, Secondary Cards and Rewards.
We build with the community and have been involving members through focus groups and user interviews. We take your feedback about it seriously and are iterating fast to launch tests around this topic. You can expect more soon - it's top of mind for all our leaders.
Mobile
When we started Sorare in 2018, we were building a new category and a new sport gameplay experience. We built it for the desktop first. It was the right decision at the time but we need to move on.
Last summer, with the product team, we took on a massive endeavor to re-think entirely the Sorare experience for mobile first, the only way to reach the millions of sports fans who live their passion for sports on the go and on their phone.
This will mean that everything you used to do on desktop will soon be available to do on mobile - including bringing the marketplace to our mobile apps. We believe this is going to be a massive step forward in the way we convert users into Managers (customers), but also amazing for our existing community to be able to trade on mobile.
Marketing
Once we have a product that is usable on mobile, and contains a mainstream entry point (simple, social, fun), then you're in a great position to leverage the amazing distribution we have through our ambassadors, partners, and more.
This doesn't mean that we should not do better than before. We have several initiatives to improve our relationships with community creators, notably, and deliver better, more targeted marketing campaigns.
Company building
Following our rapid growth and the rollout of new sports, we have experimented with different business and management models internally. After a period of iteration, we've landed on a centralised model to allow us to be more agile and adaptable.
Adrien and myself have restructured the company so that we can be more product and community-focused. Both of us are back to doing what made Sorare. We are on the ground, living and breathing the product with the community every day. We have taken the reins, with all the necessary resources to project ourselves for the long run.
Partners
We have the best portfolio of partners in the world of sports gaming. Most of them are long-term, exclusive relationships.
We now have as a priority to accelerate our co-marketing initiatives and deep integrations in the coming months, in order to offer to our community more access and special rewards.
We’re going to bring you even closer to the game you love!
Regulation
We're creating a new category. Sorare is not a traditional mobile or video game (given that you own your game items, can trade them, move them, etc.) nor is it betting (we have no bet involved).
It is critical that we drive for the adoption of appropriate and balanced frameworks in the jurisdictions where we have grey legal areas. Laws that protect our communities yet do not kill innovation. Laws that create regulatory certainty and clarity, so that Web2 gaming companies want to keep on developing Web3 games.
Building within the existing frameworks has been a challenge and has at times prevented us from making progress towards our high-level product vision. Recent developments - notably in France - are promising, and will allow us to further accelerate our product vision as we evolve our gameplay experience with clear guidelines. This is fantastic news for Sorare and our community.
Final notes
Innovation is a gradual process that then appears suddenly to the mainstream. We've not hit that point yet, but are convinced that what we're bringing to billions of sports fans is too good to be slept on.
@adrien_sorare team and I are so passionate about what we build that we sometimes have the feeling that we've actually not gotten started.
It's day 1. And it's going to be epic.