“Much simpler, mobile and general public”: what is “Rivals”, the new Sorare game mode?

In the elegant and very “start-up nation” offices of Sorare, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, there has been a slightly more sustained excitement than usual in recent days. Nicolas Julia and his teams, who have already won a good place over the last six years on the market of sports-related tech companies, have been testing a new game mode for several weeks, which they are opening to the general public this Thursday, January 11 : “Rivals”.

The CEO of the French unicorn exclusively presented this new mode to Le Parisien. A new way of looking at this fantasy game, built around cards bearing the image of football players in the form of NFT, which has already won over some 5 million players but of which only 250,000 are active, according to the counts of the company.

A free game mode that is intended to be interactive

“The idea is to make Sorare pro but much simpler, mobile and for the general public,” explains Nicolas Julia. In “Rivals”, the idea is, for a given specific poster (for example, Lens-PSG this weekend) to choose 5 players from the two teams, within the limit of a given budget (each player is assigned a value), to build a team with the objective of scoring as many points as possible based on the actual performance of the chosen players.

The heart of this new game mode is social, he explains. “When you’re watching a match, with friends, at the bar, we want you to be able to challenge a friend in two clicks, play a one-on-one match and progress in the game very simply. » For those who do not have active friends on Sorare, there will then remain the “Arena”, where you are “matched” against another user according to an Elo ranking system, which determines the level and dynamics current status of a user. Streaks of victories and good performances will give access to rewards, in the form of “boxes” which can contain physical gifts (jerseys, tickets for matches, etc.).

Nicolas Julia is the co-creator and CEO of Sorare.

If this game is, in fact, “totally free” and intended to attract players to Sorare who would have been alienated by the “NFT”, “cryptocurrencies” and “investment” aspect, we can still use it, if we hope, its paying cards “to advance more quickly in the game”. Card sales obviously remain “the business model” of Sorare, Julia concedes.

“But the idea is to balance the game well so that whoever doesn’t put in €1 can achieve very high,” he counterbalances. You have to be able to get to the top with a lot of skills, and at the same time whoever wants to progress faster is helped by having cards. » Other “bonuses” can be achieved by tactical choices in the game: for example, a player who chooses an “offensive” tactic would obtain more points if his team hits a certain number of times on goal.

A much more complete mobile application, the other big new feature of 2024

The arrival of this new game mode for Sorare comes in conjunction with another highly anticipated advancement: the development, on Apple and Android, of a much more complete mobile application that gives users full access to their account. This should be available to everyone by the end of January.

“Today, usage is not at all mobile: we were very limited by relationships with the platforms, particularly on the purchase and resale of cards. We spent a lot of time unlocking this, we’re really happy to be able to do it. If you want to reach the general public in 2024, on a social product like ours, you need an app. This is an essential prerequisite to achieve our ambition of becoming the biggest tech sport. »

With these two new keys in hand, Sorare hopes to build on the very good performance of the game during the World Cup, with free game modes comparable to “Rivals” which have attracted many new users (up to 900,000 active on certain periods). “But the problem is that then to be able to support that without the tools I’m talking about, it was complicated. » For Sorare, 2024 therefore opens with its share of innovations and promises.