Sorare struggles to live up to the hype

One-time tech unicorn is suffering from poor UX while NFT hype has moved on

Sorare was predicted to hit the tech, finance and startup heights just three or four years ago, but reports of its financial difficulties have filtered through. Jake Pollard investigates further.

Giving an insightful look into the company’s current struggles, Sebastian Paris, COO of bwise Media, hinted at potential missed opportunities for integration with some of the biggest data platforms.

“One reason for their difficult situation might be the lack of integration/partnerships with the most relevant platforms for player data, statistics and scores – such as 365Scores, Sofascore, Flashscore, FotMob, BeSoccer, OneFootball, LiveScore.

“Those apps and websites are known to be crucial pillars in most betting companies’ digital strategies”.

Gaming&Co (G&Co) and SBC News followed up with Paris on the discussion he initiated to bring more clarity on the situation.

Paris said: “Football-focused (live score) apps and websites are the strongest digital channels to find your audience and engage with them frequently and in highly targeted ways. 

“There could be many unique ways of integrating Sorare’s NFT products into those channels, but as far as I know Sorare never really tried working or partnering with them, which I believe to be a huge miss when it comes to picking the right customer acquisition and retention channels/partnerships”.

If a lack of traffic from those live score/affiliate brands is one reason why Sorare has not attracted enough players to produce meaningful returns, many also blamed Sorare’s poor UX.

Perric Blanchet, CEO of the Gambling Cockpit, said Sorare seems to suffer from a number of problems: “Its UX/UI is the first major issue, and players have great difficulty in identifying competitions that can take part in competitions without having to get their credit cards out. They try once, twice and in the end they just churn.”

Market sentiment and levels of interest in NFTs and the web 3 market have also been important negative factors for Sorare. Indeed they are far from what they were in 2021, when Sorare raised $685m and was valued at more than $4bn.

Sectoral blues

This is despite Sorare adopting iGaming-like marketing policies and recruiting affiliate managers. Blanchet says he’s “unsure whether it has worked for the group, despite the DFS affiliate and information ecosystem being a vast space” in which operators can reach millions of fans.

Another broad point is that “Sorare’s travails are much discussed, as if it was the only company in the space, but on a sectoral basis we can see that brands like Stables (part of PMU) have also been suffering”, adds Blanchet.

Furthermore, if the NFT-web 3 market is struggling and could be on the verge of entering a period of consolidation, Sorare will always be one of its most obvious canaries attracting most of the coverage.

Returning to Sebastian Paris’s point about Sorare not advertising on live score platforms, it’s also worth asking if the group has to promote itself on those sites to attract large-enough liquidity levels that will generate the volumes and revenues it seeks.

Paris says those channels “alone won’t guarantee success and high liquidity, but they are a very important channel, not only for betting brands. Again, a huge miss from Sorare to not focus on these more”.

Crypto-gambling is often associated with high-spending players, especially in online casino but also in sports betting circles, but the fact that Sorare has struggled could also be related to the age of its original user base, which was always very young. 

In addition, “there is a major difference between a web 3 NFT fantasy bettor and a crypto punter who wants to bet on sports”, notes one G&Co contact.

Paris adds that Sorare can’t be compared to crypto sportsbooks. The latter “have proven to not only work extremely well in grey/black markets and attract VIP players due to their advantages in crypto deposits/withdrawals, fewer financial KYC burdens and attracting players with substantial crypto holdings to play. 

“Sorara was betting hard on NFTs, which obviously lost the majority of their hype and haven’t developed much since.”

Low key, high profile

For other industry observers, Sorare also inhabits an in-between space between fantasy betting and ‘regular’ sportsbook, and has been strongly criticised for it, especially in France, its home market.

G&Co’s industry source added: “That position means it has focused on high profile and costly marketing partnerships with sports leagues or clubs that give it great visibility, but this also means it is advertising its wares while constantly deflecting questions about its ‘gambling-like’ operating model.”

Sorare has now exited the top 40/120 of the most promising French tech startups and although its CEO Nicolas Julia has talked of plans to float the business in 2025 without resorting to a third round of funding, it’s difficult to see what value a listing would generate.

Still, the company’s lobbying to exempt it from the strict regulations real money gambling companies are subject to in France has been highly successful.