As I was searching for a card to fill out a sorare team, I was thinking to myself that there has to be a better way to do this. So I wrote a proposal to some friends about how a Sorare lending market would look:
There should be a lending market for sorare players. This would in general make the sorare card market more efficient and in specific:
- Lower the bar to entry into sorare competitions (competitors can pay a
fraction of lifetime ownership price to enter once)- Allow card owners to generate revenue from assets that they are not using for competition
A simple version of this would be relatively easy to create. The following would need to be tracked:
- A list of ongoing sell-side offers (managers looking to rent their player out). More specifically:
- The player
- The ideal loan length
- The ideal loan price. This could be fixed $, fixed eth, % of winnings, another card.
- A list of ongoing buy-side offers (managers looking for player(s) to complete their lineup). The same stuff would need to be tracked.
- Reputation for members of the platform. This could be in the form of verified completed loans and/or reviews from other members of the platform.
- As a stretch, perhaps there could be a mechanism where the receiver of the card could put up some collateral to raise the chances the loan would be respected.
The main piece of feedback I received on this idea was that the more that Sorare lowers the bar to weekly competition entry, the more this game starts to look like sports gambling. And running a sports gambling game can be way more of a pain in the ass to manage than running a trading card game that hey, whaddaya know, has weekly prizes involved on the side. And I get that point.
Additionally, I think part of the magic of sorare is you get to act like a real life soccer team owner. This is a role that has traditionally been reserved for millionaires and billionaires who buy real soccer teams and real players. When I think about players that I should buy, I think about how they will fit in with the rest of my team. I think about their long-term utility, their mindset, where they are in their career, how they will grow and develop as a player and as a human being. And when they do grow and develop in that way, it feels good as an owner. And that’s a feeling that should be preserved through game mechanics, not thrown by the wayside in favor of greater asset utility.
So to sum up, lifetime player ownership is:
- Easier to manage from an operational perspective. It’s not gambling if it’s a trading card game.
- More emotionally involved and I think enhances the game experience.
- More expensive.
On the other hand, weekly player ownership is:
- Harder to manage from an operational perspective as it’s closer to gambling.
- Less emotionally involved. If your player gets injured or whatever, no big deal, they’re not your player next week.
- Less expensive.
Well, maybe there is a middle ground that can increase the utility of the cards somewhat, but also preserve the emotional involvement you get from long-term ownership. This middle-ground is the season-long loan.
The season-long loan would increase card utility and lower the bar to entry, to a lesser degree than weekly loans, but it still would.
And:
- It would make owning a sorare team even more like owning a real team, where season-long loans are a thing.
- It would create another mechanism to foster community amongst team owners. Unlike trades, which are transactional in nature, season-long loans would align the interests of two owners on the same card. What’s better than one person cheering for someone who scores a goal? Two people cheering for someone who scores a goal.
So if you are on the Sorare team and you read this, make season-long loans a thing please!