SorareData Newsletter, Issue 11 ⚽️
What’s 🆕
🔦 Feature Spotlight
💯💯💯💯💯
📺 Latest Streams & Podcasts 🎧
What’s 🆕
Lineup Projection Tool: Since the implementation of the “Injuries” tab on our manager gallery pages, we’ve strived to find quality, reliable and consistent injury and suspension information to help Sorare managers make more informed SO5 lineups. However, we believe our current sources for this type of news are insufficient because of the very high level of coverage and accuracy required for the plethora of leagues with Sorare coverage. For a tool to be useful, it has to be reliable and accurate, and we believe (along with feedback from SorareData users) that our current sources are not enough.
Recognizing a single, or even a few, third-party sources were insufficient for all of this information, we realized we had access to a trove of information gatherers who could help: the SorareData community. No fantasy sports platform is as diverse with active, informed and committed users, and we wanted to build a tool that would harness this dedication to help all managers.
With that, we are extremely pleased to introduce our new community lineup projection tool. This feature will allow any member to submit their own lineup projections for any team, or teams, they are informed on, and we will aggregate the results to calculate an expected selection percentage. These numbers will be a key feature in our lineup builder, and every user will be able to quickly see if other community members believe their players will be in the starting XI for their upcoming matches.
Those who submit projected lineups will have the option to mark players as a “starter”, “doubtful” or “non-starter”, and those who are accurate with their projections will be eligible to win rewards, such as SorareData memberships, limited cards and physical/live experiences of Sorare licensed teams.
Additionally, we will publish a leaderboard to highlight managers who are successful in their lineup projections, and SorareData members who participate will be able to track their accuracy every gameweek.
And, maybe most importantly, we are offering this tool to all SorareData members, which means anyone with a Rookie (free), Pro or Star membership will be able to submit projected lineups, and utilize the tool in our lineup builder. We believe the strength of the SorareData community is the best source for team news, and we hope this new tool will become a powerful resource for all Sorare managers. Managers can start making projections through the Gameweek center and its dedicated “Community lineups” tab.
Oh, and one more thing.
We have completely redesigned and rebuilt our lineup builder from the ground up and we are ready to launch a first version. Therefore, we are opening it up to all SorareData members through Gameweek 311, taking us through the upcoming international break, regardless of membership level. We believe this new lineup builder, along with the community lineup projections, will help our members more than ever, and we’re extremely excited to see it in action.
As always, if you have any feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: support@soraredata.com.
🔦 Feature Spotlight
We previously highlighted our Matchups tab within the Gameweek Center, but a big enhancement we recently added is Matchup Indicators, which are numerical grades used to evaluate the strength of a matchup by position.
Win probabilities, clean sheet chances, and odds to score or concede 3+ goals have been included in our matchups page for a while, and each help Sorare managers get a better understanding of how teams match up against their upcoming opponents. However, they do not necessarily provide any positional help; that’s where the matchup indicators come in.
The matchup indicators are the addition of two things:
A club’s over/under-performance compared to league average in a specific position (i.e club SO5 average) - league SO5 average.
The opponent score over/under-performance compared to league average (i.e opp. score) - league SO5 average.
For example, let's consider a Real Madrid v. Barcelona game.
Real Madrid forwards average 73 fantasy points per game at home during La Liga matches, whereas the average among all forwards in La Liga is 51.
Meanwhile, Barcelona have conceded an average of 56 fantasy points per game to forwards in La Liga matches.
Matchup indicator is 73 - 51 + 56 - 51 = 27
Or, Real Madrid defenders average 44 fantasy points per home match during La Liga games versus the league average of 49, while Barcelona concede an average of 42 fantasy points per game to defenders when playing away La Liga games.
Matchup indicator is 44 - 49 + 42 - 49 = -12
Simply put, the higher the matchup indicator, the more favorable the matchup for that position. Additionally, each column on the Matchup tab is fully sortable, and the matchup indicators can also be found in our lineup builder.
💯💯💯💯💯
We had a historic lineup entry last weekend in Gameweek 304, as Sorare manager Chrombizeps put up the first perfect score in Sorare history, managing an XP-adjusted 565.00 fantasy points on the back of five raw 100s to win Challenger Europe Limited.
The massive score was nearly 20 fantasy points higher than any other limited lineup during the gameweek, and it was rewarded with the 302/1000 Jota from Celtic and $300. Amazingly, it was the only lineup submitted that gameweek by Chrombizeps, and the 12th reward they’ve won since joining on 21 August 2021. You can even tell what the value of the Jota card did to their gallery value:
The incredibly high score came off the back of Zenit St. Petersburg’s 8-0 victory over Orenburg, plus 100-point scores from Dušan Tadić and Ilya Lantratov, who came into the match having never scored even 90 fantasy points in a match. However, a penalty save in a clean sheet helped him get there, enabling him to be the only goalkeeper with 100 points in the gameweek, though seven others eclipsed 85.
The score range of outcomes for goalkeepers increased with the new scoring matrix, as we’ve seen 80+ scores happen more often, and it also has felt like we’ve seen an increase in scores across Challenger Europe specifically (for all positions). That made us start to wonder whether the overall Challenger Europe scores are higher than the other regions, so we quickly looked at the minimum points required for Tier 0 and Tier 1 limited rewards across each main competition since the new scoring rules were put in place during GW 300.
We can see that during the weekend gameweeks (the even-numbered ones), it has taken more points to win Tier 0 and Tier 1 limited rewards in Challenger Europe, followed by either Champion Europe or All Star. However, it’s the massive GW304 that many are interested in, and we wanted to dive in to see just how much higher the scores were in Challenger versus the others. To do that, we combined all of the limited lineups (excluding the special weeklies like Underdog and Specialist) and looked at the distribution of regions within the top 100, 500, 1000, 2000 and 5000 highest-scoring lineups.
Doing this showed us that 71 of the 100 highest-scoring limited lineups in GW304 were played in Challenger Europe Limited, followed by 26 in All Star, 2 in U23 and 1 in America. There were 90 lineups that scored more than the 487.30 needed to win America Limited, and while there were only 41 higher than the 504.59 that won U23 Limited, there were 99 higher than second place in U23 Limited.
Looking at a percentage basis as we moved out, 45% of the 500 highest-scoring lineups came from Challenger Europe, as well as 35% of the top 1000.
The top 1000 is when we saw All Star overtake Challenger Europe in terms of a plurality of lineups within the range, and the percentages continue to decrease for those two competitions as we increase the number of lower scores. We can also look at this for the other gameweeks since the scoring matrix change:
These graphs do not necessarily provide a different conclusion in terms of minimum points required for top rewards, but they do help understand the distribution of the highest-scoring lineups each gameweek. All Star still seems to be the place where we find the highest-scoring lineups of the gameweek, so the results in Challenger Europe Limited during GW304 may actually be the outlier instead of the norm.
What we DO see is that Challenger Europe has consistently had lots of high-scoring lineups compared to other competitions, and given the higher number of rewards available in All Star, it may actually be more beneficial to enter that competition instead of Challenger if you’re truly competing for a top spot. And another reason why that may be the case: top prize reward value.
📺 Latest Streams & Podcasts 🎧
Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
SorareAndrews Podcast: Let’s Predict the Future
Lairdinho and Black discuss the new Community Lineup Projection tool on SorareData, as well as the redesigned and rebuilt Lineup Builder.
SorareData Strategy Show: 500 is the New 400
Lairdinho and psufans2 discuss the perfect score from Sorare manager chromebizeps, who had five players each hit 100 points, in GW 304, and whether the recent higher scores needed for rewards requires a strategy change.