SorareData Newsletter, Issue 9 ⚽️
What’s 🆕
🔦 Feature Spotlight
Points required to win rewards in Underdog 🐶
📺 Latest Streams & Podcasts 🎧
What’s 🆕
SO5 Sorare Scores: Discovering players who averaged no more than 40, 45 or 50 fantasy points per game over their last 15 gameweeks is vital for Sorare managers who are playing Underdog and Specialist contests, and we’ve now made this process even easier by allowing SorareData users to see Sorare’s calculated averages for upcoming gameweeks.
“Wait, why is there a difference between what Sorare and SorareData show? Shouldn’t they be the same?”
The reason our averages are occasionally different is because SorareData are not reliant on Sorare for scoring statistics, instead utilizing our partnership with Opta, which also allows us to do a number of things, including deliver real-time decisive action notifications on our mobile app (among others). The main differences come when a scoring decision is changed after a Sorare gameweek ends; instead of stopping our scoring then, like Sorare, we use the updated corrected stats from Opta to ensure we have the most accurate player data.
However, we realize that the decision to show the most up-to-date data caused differences in our L5 and L15 averages, which occasionally showed players who were eligible for Underdog or Specialist contests even though they were not on Sorare. To address this issue, we now allow SorareData users to decide which averages they want to see. To change to Sorare averages, simply click on your manager name on the top right of our site and select Settings & Membership, where you’ll find the toggle to select your preference.
🔦 Feature Spotlight
Many SorareData members use price alerts to be notified when a card is posted to the secondary market below a certain price, and we’ve made it even easier to see and organize all of your price alerts. Using our recently redesigned watchlists, you can now track all of your price alerts on a single page, and it takes only a few seconds to create or update new alerts.
Additionally, we’ve added My price alerts to your manager drop-down menu, which means you don’t even have to navigate through your watchlists to get to your price alerts.
In addition to the list, SorareData members can use our extensive filters to narrow down their searches, such as only midfielders from Challenger Europe, players with an L15 of 50 or below, or cards that have average sales prices within a certain range.
And any time a card is put on the market under the set price, you’ll be notified directly on your mobile device, as long as you’ve downloaded the powerful SorareData mobile app.
Don’t have it yet? Get it today!
Points required to win rewards in Underdog 🐶
Sorare introduced a new rule beginning in GW 289 that required only four cards from a single scarcity to be used in Underdog contests. Many Sorare managers took this as no longer needing a goalkeeper, opening up the competition for those who had previously avoided spending up at the most expensive position.
Underdog Limited has become a very popular tournament, as we saw 18,670 managers enter in GW 300, the second-highest number of entries for the gameweek, trailing All Star Limited’s 25,100 and sitting ahead of the 17,242 in All Star Rare. The rewards have been significant too, as we’ve seen people win cards of Kylian Mbappé Lionel Messi, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Joshua Kimmich, and Karim Benzema, among others.
With only 11 gameweeks using the latest rules for Underdog (four players averaging 50 or below), we don’t have a significant sample for our analysis. And while the prize pools seem to be stabilizing, Limited always had Tier 0, 1, 2, and 3 rewards, Rare did not have Tier 3s until GW 297, and Super Rare only had them in GWs 298 and 300. That said, let’s look at the minimum number of points required to win rewards per gameweek in each scarcity:
As a reminder, these are scores generated by only four cards, though one is a captain, which is pretty vital because there are no XP bonuses in any of these contests. As we can see (and please note the scale does not start at zero), the scoring is fairly close throughout the scarcities, with rare actually the most competitive in terms of points needed for rewards. We can also focus on each scarcity and additional tier of cards won, as some people prefer to focus on what it has taken to win Tier 0, 1 or 2 rewards instead of just Tier 3s. In that case, let’s break it down by scarcity:
Looking at the Tier 0 (blue) data points, it seems that 350 total points is a reasonable target if that’s what you’re trying to win (and, let’s be honest, isn’t that what we’re all trying to win?). Winning Tier 0s seems to be a bit easier in Limited, at least in terms of the number of points required to win cards, but they’re still generally in the 350-point range.
To put that into context, 350 points equates to an average score of around 78 points per card (three players at 78 and one at 78 x 1.5 for the captain multiplier = 351). If you’re looking at the roughly 250 points to win a Tier 3 in these competitions, that’s roughly 55.6 fantasy points per card.
Because of the need for higher scores to win bigger prizes, plus the higher cost of the cards themselves versus other positions, the assumption is that many managers are using a non-limited card as their goalkeeper in Underdog Limited, hoping that their defender, midfielder, forward and extra each score enough points to get into the rewards. However, we found it quite interesting that since the rule change that allowed managers to only use four cards, 10 of 12 gameweeks have seen a goalkeeper as the most-used player, including Paris Saint-Germain’s Gianluigi Donnarumma four times!
It’s a bit surprising that someone of Donnarumma’s stature would be a regular participant in Underdog contests, especially considering he can be used in Champion Europe, U23 and All Star anyway, but given his upside potential, maybe he’s a more viable option for hitting a big score among players averaging 50 or fewer in their last 15.
And if you thought it was just a Limited Underdog situation, Donnarumma was also the most-used player in Underdog Rare during GWs 296, 298 and 300, and all eight of the Underdog Rare contests since the rule change have had a goalkeeper as the most-used.
As we said at the beginning, the sample size is too small to make any pure strategy decisions based on previous gameplay, but we at least see a bit of a range in terms of points required for rewards that could help SorareData users when they’re building their lineups.
📺 Latest Streams & Podcasts 🎧
Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
SorareAndrews Podcast: Sorare in Five Years
Lairdinho and Black speculate on what they think Sorare will look like in 2027, including which sports may be offered, how many users participate and what types of experiences the platform will provide.
SorareData Strategy Show: Your cards aren’t worth what YOU think they’re worth
Lairdinho and psufans2 talk about how many Sorare managers value their cards, and why their method isn't necessarily accurate for when they actually want to sell their cards.