This article is the cover story of a project that we developed or supported :
SorareData
Founded by Maxime Hagenbourger in 2020, SorareData provide critical trading, gaming and live sports data to enhance users engagement and performance in NFT Fantasy Sports. SorareData cover football (soccer), basketball and baseball, the three sports officially licensed by Sorare, the global leader in NFT Fantasy Sports. Most Sorare users also use SorareData's web and mobile apps, including over 10k paying users.
NFT Fantasy Sports
Web3 presented many features of a financial bubble, a bubble that burst at the beginning of 2022 wiping out billions of dollars of value in the process. Some Web3 applications were nonetheless built on more robust foundations and NFT Fantasy Sports, at the intersection of gaming and gambling, are arguably one of them.
Everyone is a sports fan : sports events are broadcasted globally and some attract hundreds of millions of viewers, sometimes billions. Passion for sports is also evidenced in sports betting, a growing market that exceeded $200bn globally in 2022*. Growth in the sector has been driven by the opening of the US market since 2019, which now represents c.$10bn*. The US are also a big market for Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) representing another c.$10bn*. Users' appeal for betting and DFS does not only rely on a financial motivation, these activities are key drivers of fans engagement. But it comes at a significant cost, as it results in a financial loss for most users.
In traditional fantasy sports, the strategic dimension of building a roster for the long term also contributes to fans' engagement. NFT Fantasy Sports overlap with sports betting/DFS due to the Play-to-Earn model: making the right decisions in terms of purchases and lineups can yield substantial monetary rewards and/or new NFTs. And some of the shortcomings of the betting and DFS models are addressed by NFT Fantasy Sports since "entry fees" are invested rather than spent : the assets can be used multiple times and are transferable. It does not mean that they will retain value forever, but at the very least their value can be amortized in the medium-to-long term. This is why it is not unreasonable to assume that NFT Fantasy Sports could be a long term thing, albeit technical and cultural hurdles still need to be overcome to unlock mass adoption.
As for betting and DFS, sports knowledge and scouting can be highly valuable skills in NFT Fantasy Sports. These skills often rely heavily on data. However, typical data platforms distribute raw stats ; often in a non-user-friendly way. SorareData did not only seize the opportunity to raise the bar in terms of UX, they also understood that NFT Fantasy Sports would bring new dimensions to data apps and require new tools. Behind every single NFT, there are several important metrics to monitor :
- Sports/player data :
- Player status in club (starter, substitute,...)
- Recent fantasy scoring averages & stats, down to single stat items : key for gaming and purchase decisions
- Player injuries & suspensions status : critical for gaming decisions as well as roster management
- Live game statistics
- Market data :
- NFT floor price, recent average price and, if owned, purchase price. Critical for purchase decisions, valuation and accounting
- Price of similar players : key for arbitrage decisions
- Market trends more generally
- Ownership/utility data :
- NFT utility in fantasy tournaments
- Specific fantasy game attributes (bonus, xp)
- rewards / yield won
To cover all bases across all sports, SorareData leverage blockchain and other open API information as well as data purchased from third parties. SorareData are the only platform that combines the 3 key areas to be successful at NFT Fantasy Sports: scouting, gaming and collection management.
Market / Scouting
Gaming
Management
SorareData Platforms’ 4th dimension is user engagement:
- Directly on the platforms:
- market alerts & watchlists
- live game statistics and tournament leaderboards
- Content strategy:
- Original content in English and French : Youtube, Twitch, infographics and insights
- Content creators : user-friendly solutions for content creators to entertain communities. The product is highly visible, and support of the Sorare community is a very strong in general
Monetization
As users can hardly extract value from typical stats platforms, monetization can be challenging. In constrast, conversion rate on SorareData's freemium offering seems impressive. This has been achieved without significant investments in marketing (if any) and is instead driven by the team's attention to details.
In the data industry, data itself is only monetized when it is truly proprietary, otherwise the object of monetization is the user’s time. The value-add that justifies a subscription price is not so much about aggregating the data in a certain way; but rather about delivering it as efficiently as possible from the user’s perspective. Product design (features and UX) must be the cornerstone of the pay-to-learn offering, making it so compelling that users would not even envisage to figure things out by themselves for free.
This has been SorareData's approach since day 1... and as a result they have never needed hyping. They have created their own hype by consistently delivering value-add for their users in everything they shipped, and it's amazing to see a start-up succeed by placing the needs of their customers first, instead of prioritizing funding. It was certainly not the norm in 2020-2021, when writing "Web3" in a PowerPoint presentation was sufficient to raise millions from VCs. All the credit goes to Maxime and his team for refusing complacency at any cost, for their products and for their capital. This may be the single reason why the company is now able to stand on its two feet.
Regardless of where Web3 is going, the future is bright for this team in the sports industry. Looking forward to seeing what's next for them...
