Hello and welcome into a very special episode of the Sorare Spotlight. Joining me today, co-founder and CEO of Sorare, Nicolas Julia, to give us a little bit of a review of Sorare 26, what we might expect in Sorare 27. We'll be joined a little later by Tolga, Momo, and Gee from the product team to go over some more details. Nicolas, first off, thank you very much for coming on. Everybody has been very excited about Sorare recently, particularly about Sorare Set, and yeah, would love to hear kind of what your thoughts were on Sorare Set and where we go from here.
Yeah, look, thank you Andrew for having me. Very excited to share some direction about where we're going and Sorare 27, and Sorare Set in particular, and what does it mean and how I'm thinking about that. First, let's try to step back and look at what we are trying to do with Sorare in general. What we are trying to do with Sorare in general is to build kind of a generational movement to reinvent the way we collect stuff, with all the features that you know, the fact that you can play with discounts, you can trade them, and so on. And you love them also because they are so incredible from a creativity standpoint. And I think that putting human creativity at the center of what we do is even more important in this new world of AI in general. So that's what we're trying to do. And I think that the problem we had in the past is that we had this niche community of users loving the limited scarcities, but for the rest of the world, it was very expensive and very complicated to get in our universe. And that's what we are trying to solve. And I think we are starting to see amazing results with Sorare Set. It's how do you get in this Sorare ecosystem. You can play for free, but if you want to buy cards, you can get in at a much more affordable price point. And I think that's, and collect the players that you love, right? Because some people could say, 'Yeah, Sorare, cool.' No, you can get in at prices that are cheaper than we had in some period of time in our history. But still, if you want to play with the best players, it gets very, very, very expensive. So I think that's one thing we are solving. And the other one is the overall user experience, and trying to simplify the user interface and navigation and so on. And I think on both fronts, the team has delivered big time. And so we are, yeah, very, I think the first thing is the community seems to be very excited, and so we are very excited because we are waking up every morning for that. And yeah, when I'm looking at the data, we have retention levels that we've never seen in the company history, you know, not just last year or two years or three, never seen in company history. We have conversion rates from sign-up to 'I'm buying a pack or card' that we've never seen in company history. And we have literally dozens of millions of cards that have been collected since we launched the first set, hundreds of thousands of users that are interacting with Set. So yeah, so far it's a very, very strong start. Like we should not forget that it's just a few weeks at this stage. We have a crazy set that is coming in the next few weeks, as we have a small event in the United States, Mexico, and Canada that's happening. So yeah, it's going to be an exciting new set as I said, and as I said again, it's a very, very promising start, and we're going to keep on improving that.
Yeah, I think the adoption of Set from so many existing users who have played Pro for a year, two years, five years is just evidence of how good the game is that you guys built. Because we know that there have been other free-to-play options over the years that some people played but didn't fully get into it, and it feels like Set hit something with them that they said, 'I really want to play this.' And there are so many communities that are expanding because of Set, a game that didn't exist a few months ago, and now we're on our second iteration, the third one. The expectation was at the beginning, 'Oh, they're getting this ready for the summer.' Is there a thought that, so I guess the first question is, was the goal of Sorare Set to be setting us up for this summer, or was it a new onboarding tool? Or how did you guys kind of introduce Set to yourselves, and has that changed?
Yeah. No, the overall direction that I shared to the team was you need to build something that is true to Sorare's DNA, meaning that we have the card at the center, we get even more creative than we've been in the past with fresh content every month, then every week, then every day, with design that is just amazing and that people love to see and to share and to have in their pocket. And we are building something that needs to be cohesive with the rest of the other scarcities. And we want that convergence to happen. And so we learned from the past and other experiments that we had with free-to-play experiences where yes, some of the game modes were good. Some of them, we have people that want them even to come back. But you know, it was not part of a cohesive experience. And that's what we want to achieve here. I think your thinking about, yes, we want to be ready for the summer is right. And so we wanted to have enough shots to get something that is truly worth it for the summer, and we'll get there. And so, not only the overall product is going to be better, we're going to have many surprises around the World Cup, and you also want to improve it. So we will have a social experience that would be built around it that I think the community would love.
Love to hear that. There's some comments in the live chat that I think just got answered based on what you're saying. Speaking of the live chat, I appreciate everybody bringing their questions there. There were over 500 questions submitted to Sorare when the AMA was announced. We're going to try to get through not all 500. Thankfully, there were some duplicates there, but we're going to address kind of the most popular ones there. So, certainly submit your questions in the live chat. I'm just not sure, I can't promise that we'll get to address all of them just because there were so many that we already are trying to get through. So, you mentioned that Set was originally getting us ready for this summer. Obviously a very big tournament going on that we're all getting very excited about. Do you anticipate Set being a major part of Sorare 27 as well, and will we see kind of more similarities between Set and Pro?
Yeah, look, I'm seeing lots of comments around the fact that we're going to invest everything on Set and the other scarcities are going to be left apart, and all this is, of course, not going to happen. And Set is going to be an amazing entry point for people to get to know Sorare. As I said, cheaper, simpler, very exciting, faster, sharable, social, all this is going to happen. But even from a very pragmatic standpoint, the limited scarcity is the bulk of our business today. So there's absolutely no point on not going to invest on them, and actually, we are investing most of our resources to make Sorare 27 launch a massive success. And the way I see it is that we saw on 26 we landed an experience on limited scarcities that users love, and there are lots of things of course that we need to keep because it just works, you know, and so there's no point on breaking stuff that are working. And at the same time, with Set, you have iteration loops that are faster, you know, you can try new things and you also discover things because you don't need to wait like six months to try something new. And yes, so the limited scarcities, they're going to benefit from that, and that's this kind of convergence that I was mentioning that you want to happen, because you don't want for Sorare 27 just to be a copy-paste of Sorare 26, because otherwise, yes, stability is important for the stuff that work, but you also want to solve the challenges that we have and the stuff that the community wants us to solve. So that's this kind of balance that's not always easy to strike, but where I think we have a very good grasp of the challenges, and the product and creative team, they have amazing solutions for that.
Excellent. Speaking of those, there were a lot of questions submitted kind of about the latest UX on the site and the app, and is there anything specific that you guys are trying to address in terms of UX heading into Sorare 27, or is it like, where is that kind of in your planning?
Yeah, I think that's a place where Sorare Set, this new scarcity, put a new standard with the mobile experience in particular, in terms of where we want to go. Something that's really smooth, that's fast, and that's again simplified in terms of how we navigate and show information to users. So we want to improve massively the mobile experience in general, to make it faster, to make it easier in terms of how to get the information that you want in a few clicks. So that's a massive work stream that we have for the launch of Sorare 27. And again, you want to be inspired by what's working and what you discover along the way and what the community loves. And at the same time, you want to keep what's working. And the game modes that you've introduced in the past and that are sticking around and working. So that's the balance we're going to strike.
Excellent. Excellent. You mentioned earlier that you're seeing kind of retention numbers that you've never seen before, which is great to see. As much as everybody loves to hear about that, they also want to know about growth. And kind of what the growth trend is and what you guys are going to do to, I don't know if it's a big marketing effort or whatever it is. People everybody asks about marketing, but they really want to, the real question is just how many more users are we getting, but what are some of the things that you guys are considering kind of in that respect?
Yeah. So I think around the World Cup you're going to see things that we've never done and that are truly, I think, amazing in terms of how we get the word out. So I cannot share more at this stage, but it's going to be really cool and I think it's going to be something that's really, really well integrated between marketing and product, because if you do something being outside but when you're coming to the product you don't see that continuity, it's not working. So, we're going to have something that's truly, you know, very well connected between what you are seeing out there and what you are experiencing when you download the app or come to sorare.com. And then in terms of strategy, I think what we want to do is to put the creators or influencers, depending on how you call them, at the center of what we do. Give more power, leverage more the community and the creators that sit within the community. And so we've launched a variety of programs in order to better support this community by sharing content and helping them to grow and to engage with the community. So that's really at the center of what we do. And I think from the first day, what has been super strong for us is the community, and you know, at some point, sometimes it's also challenging because with high expectations, you know, you need to deliver. But that's, I think, again, the center of the marketing strategy: the creators, the creators, the creators. And so we want in the US in particular around the summer be really present, and we will. So yeah, that's without again revealing too much because there are stuff that I need to keep secret until the very beginning of the event. But in a few words, creators, United States of America, and very tight coordination between creative marketing experiences and creative product delivery, basically.
Has it been difficult to have so many resources dedicated to figuring out what you guys want to do this summer with Sorare 27 so closely after? There's not much time in between. The calendar didn't give you any favors in terms of planning changes to Sorare 27. Obviously there are lots of positives with Sorare 26. I think you see that by the number of people who say just keep it like this. But you guys recognize that there are some issues that you want to address in 27. But what's it been like to kind of navigate getting ready for this summer and then the start of the European season, you know, football season right after that?
I think, look, if you think about Sorare Set as one product and Sorare Pro and the limited scarcity as a second product, then yes, it becomes challenging because you know, it's hard to get focused. If you think again about a cohesive experience, you know, where you have the same vision, the same direction, but you know, just scarcities and game modes that cut down to different budgets, but have the potential to reach a lot of people, then it becomes much easier. And again, with Sorare 26, we reached a state with the limited scarcity where we have a lot of conviction on what's loved by the community, what's working for us as a business as well, because it's important, and I think we found that balance too. So I think that's the way I look at it. And again, Sorare Pro taking the best of Set and keeping what's working, and also Sorare Set has been informed by what's working well on Pro, right? Because putting the tricks at the center and simplifying everything is something that we've learned by the success of Sorare 26. So I think both can learn from each other, and there are cross-learning that we can have on both directions, even if the user persona is not exactly the same. There are still learnings that we can take from each game mode.
Okay. There were a couple questions in the chat about this, and I know licensing is a tough thing to talk about because usually one side, if not both, don't really want everybody to know about them or talk about them. But are you able to speak on what the license or the league situation is going to look like for Sorare 27 in terms of what we can expect as users?
Look, I think on this front, generally we're going to have stability. There may be a few changes here and there, but generally we're going to have stability. I can already share that there will be new leagues for 27, and they will get a proper introduction, and the creative and marketing team will do a much better job than I could do. So I will let them take the stage for that in a few months. But there will be new ones, and I'm very excited about that.
Excellent. Excellent. I know you have plenty of other things to do, but the last question I just kind of wanted to ask, obviously as co-founder of Sorare, you've seen everything that has happened with the platform, and I'm just kind of generally curious how you feel right now about the company and where it's been and kind of more where it's going.
Yeah, look, I think the platform overall, the business is in the best spot at the moment because we've, I think, something is happening with Set actually, and I shared a few numbers. We have a winning formula for the limited scarcity, and in the years to come, of course, we're going to keep on refining and improving and all that. And the business is in a much, much healthier state than it has been at some point. And it feels really good about that because when you have the craziness of the market that we've seen in '21 or '22, like it's very hard to decouple the success of what you're doing from the push from the market, right? And right now, I think we have that level of depth in the understanding of what you are doing that is super, super cool to see. But again, the most important thing is to see the community that is coming back. And even I was talking about retention. If you don't have this level of retention, it's not even a point. There's not even a point to talk about growth, right? But when you have over 70% of your users that come back year over year, you are at retention levels, sorry. And I'm not talking about Set. I'm talking about Pro, that are fully world-class. And I think that's what we are building on, and we're going to keep on improving that this year. So I think I'm very, very excited about the years to come. As I said in my intro words, we are here to build a generational movement around this concept, something that is going to be remembered in the decades to come as, 'Okay, that's the new way to connect athletes with sports fans.' It's collecting on steroids or whatever you call it. And everything I'm doing with Sorare, with the partners, with the community, with my investor base, everything is done in a way that is long-term oriented. And everything that we have not done also in the past has been thought in a way that is long-term oriented. And yeah, when you are building that way, you feel it's day one, and that's really how I feel today. It's day one on our level of ambition, it's day one on our potential, it's day one on this new scarcity that we launched literally a few weeks ago, and it feels good to feel day one.
Love it, love it. Well, thank you very much, Nicolas, for the time. Everybody does love hearing from you, and so we appreciate you taking the time for that. We're going to go into some more of the details of Sorare 27, at least the ones that we can get with Momo, Gee, and Tolga coming up. So Nicolas, it's great to see you, and thanks so much for coming on.
Thank you Andrew. It feels amazing.
We got the voice here. All right. All right, gentlemen. I actually have an echo now, like I hear my own on yours. I'm not sure that one. But anyway, maybe while you speak it'll work. Hello. I can't remember if that was the first stream or not, or no, before we came on, Tolga, you were saying somebody was going to downvote because you're not wearing vintage Sorare, but we can move on to that. But anyway, guys, good to see you. The biggest question I saw from all of the ones that were submitted were about classic cards, which is funny because I think everybody's so into in-season and Set, and yet clearly the community is very into classic cards. How are classic cards done?
Yeah. So can you first, can you hear us? Can you hear us well here? No. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. Okay. Yes. So on the classic side, there was a lot of things we added in the last two years, and so the most important stuff that we see on the classic side right now are the classic slots, the staking utility, the arenas, and the leader competition. So we're pretty happy with what has been done recently. For Sorare 27, the goal is really around stability around those. So, you know, keeping those and improving if you can. We've seen, you know, some of the healthiest, it's been the healthiest year for Classic. If you look at the card price evolution of cards, a lot of stability is there, the cards, the players that are performing well. We see, you know, upticks in prices. So, for the first time in years, we're pretty satisfied with those. And so that's why for Classic, we're planning, you know, to keep on that rhythm and on the stability side.
Awesome. Awesome. Sorry, we don't hear you anymore, Andrew. Okay, now we... Yeah, perfect. We... Okay. Okay. So the classic card question ultimately comes down to how much more can we use them? Are you guys able to commit to anything about classic card usage, particularly in in-season competitions for Sorare 27?
Yeah, the goal is to keep the classic slots for in-season for Sorare as well, to keep the one-plus-one classic slot utility. So one for Star, one for Unique. We do plan to also keep the classic competition leaderboards that we have. So as today you see, you know, the global Star champion, under 23. So these are planned to keep. One thing though, around the, I mean that applies for both classic and in-season, there is a reconsideration of the divisions around the leaderboard. So having divisions in them. So yeah, those are the main domain summary.
Sorry, you say you're going to keep divisions or you don't, you guys don't know yet?
To remove them. So we have seen a lot of, at least we've seen a lot of feedback on them, and as well, you know, trying to see on our side that they were more frustration than helping out. So our conviction is more around killing them. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. So we obviously have the kind of existing model for in-season competitions that we've seen for MLS, J-League, and K-League, where we have the split hot streaks and leaderboards. Are you guys thinking that that is going to be the mode for the European season, or is it still kind of under review because it's still fairly new?
Yeah, I think we've been, you know, we kind of watched it for the MLS season, summer season to kind of test and see what the people are saying. We're seeing the data. We're just following on Discord and kind of waiting and seeing how it goes. But the feeling so far is that we really like the distinction. Especially with the divisions getting removed, we can see how you can envision how leaderboards might be kind of a stale gameplay where you're just setting the same lineups, because back in the day, two seasons ago, you had the regional competitions where you can kind of choose, you know, have that strategic decision of do I go into a champion or do I go into Premier League? And if we just have no more leaderboards, you're kind of just entering the same Premier League lineups over and over and over and it can kind of stale. So we really like that distinction. But at the same time, I like to kind of think about it like fantasy sports. It's kind of like a game of skill. And if I had to put an analogy of what fantasy sports is and the idea of getting better, I would say like golf, right? And so for me, the leaderboards is like an 18-hole round, like prize pool kind of gameplay where it's like very, very heavy PvP. It's like you don't share your lineups with anyone. You kind of keep it to yourself. And then you have hot streaks which is a bit more PvE friendly. It's, you know, you see the sociality of it where people are sharing their lineups. You know, they're encouraging each other when they hit the targets. It's very much more friendly atmosphere and you can kind of think of it like a driving range, you know. And so it also goes into the two things of skill where in the leaderboards PvP gameplay, you're really focused on that high variance, high ceiling lineups, whereas streaks we're seeing is like consistent floors and kind of playing that consistency over time. And I kind of, you kind of want like in the current model on the European scene, players are just playing for the high ceiling and kind of like hoping for whatever and they're not learning of their gameplay. Whereas when you play in hot streaks, when you play in leaderboards, you're setting certain intentions to the lineup you're creating and it creates one, the strategic decision-making, but also gives you the feedback loop of learning what you did wrong, how you can get better. And so we really like that kind of thing and that tension it creates of how do you strategically play the lineup? What do you want to play? What are the matchups? Do I want to go high ceiling for this lineup or do I want to kind of take it a little easier? Go like, you know, on the green with your friends with a beer, just hit it for a lineup, share with your friends and kind of do that thing. And then obviously we have a third kind of mode which is like our daily missions which is kind of like mini golf, you know. And so having the three kind of systems together and when you see it in terms of kind of golf, you can kind of see how all three have a purpose and all three lead to a certain kind of way of how we want to enter lineups.
Yeah. Also just to add one thing around, because we're testing it in MLS in order to try to make sure that people care about both. What we wanted to see is how many users are actually playing in one and the other. And not only this, we want to see if people are throwing away, you know, just throw away lineups or no. So we were looking at the strength of lineups that they were putting, which is, I mean, how many stars are they putting, like the strength of lineup, and it appears that it's actually been the same for both PvP, which means that we have this set of users that care about one or the other or both, but at least there is interest in both, you know, it's not like they're just treating one worse than the other. And maybe just to also try, I think that the direction for Sorare 27 is to make them their own game modes even more than what we see today with MLS, where we have separated competitions but with a lot of similarities. But the fact that those competitions like hot streaks and leaderboards are separated allow us also to have tailored gameplay and rules that are more suited for each of the game modes. And we can with Sorare 27 go even deeper down this road and make them truly separate, not comparable modes.
So that brings up or brought up literally my next question, because obviously we see the change from, or at least the introduction of Sorare 26 where we had the combination leaderboard and hot streaks. And Tolga, kind of what you said, and I feel like I've been saying it for a while, I liked the addition or the kind of the reintroduction of having to make a decision of like where to play your cards. It's not just like putting them all in. But one thing that we have seen recently with the introduction of Sorare Set is this hot, essentially this hot streak model that allows you to play whenever you want, and that runs counter to how Sorare 26 is currently set up. Do you guys envision Sorare 27 to be, at least for hot streaks? And Momo, you just kind of commented that with hot streaks and leaderboards being separate, they don't necessarily have to always have the same rules. So, do you think kind of this anytime entry for hot streaks that we have in Set could be part of Sorare 27?
Yeah. So you put it bluntly, like yeah, I think this, if we like this approach and we want to be very intentional with the game modes we set, I think they need to have some differences. And I think Set is a great example of where the hot streaks model can go. If you think about like a practice green or like a driving range, you can go anytime you want. Kind of hit whenever and kind of like, you know, improve yourself over time and constantly put a lineup in and see how you do, get that feedback loop right away and kind of improve your next hit, you know. And we want to kind of bring that idea and what Set has been doing really well to the Pro mode in the hot streaks kind of world. And then I think when we split that, you keep the fairness and the strictness rules of leaderboards to itself in the game, like week-based kind of mode so that it's super fair for everyone and they can kind of play that consistent game if they like it. But for the others who want to explore something else, who want to maybe just enjoy the game a bit more, less intense, less high stakes, you can try the hot streaks game. So I think that's the general feeling that we want to go through.
So when you build like anytime entry, we obviously have different streak levels or streak, yes, different streak levels in Set. Do you envision Sorare 27 hot streaks going to six, seven, eight levels or what's the idea?
Yeah. So we don't have the final answers, but as you hint at, because you can do multiple steps in one weekend, there might be adjusted the amount of steps that you need to do. Say would be maybe six or seven. And yeah, so that's something we would do. Yeah.
And we've seen, which we saw in the kind of J-League competition that was like a limited-based comp that had a reward boost if you used rare cards. We see this kind of reward boost idea in super rare competitions if you use uniques. Is that going to creep in as well?
So to take a step back around this, the higher scarcity. So indeed, we do see at least the higher scarcity be much more PvP focused. It fits better the rarity because I mean there's real true scarcity with the amount of cards that you can play. And the lower scarcity, limited, being more on the PvE side. Now, for the consideration that we have is indeed potentially using the rares as a reward boost that you play. What this lets us do is one, having less boards and teams to manage, instead of having per scarcity, you have just one board and then you have higher scarcity that gives you a boost. And also gives a way for limited users to start building into their rare lineups, you know, start to get their first rare that is actually useful. Which is something, you know, a bit that we lost a little bit that we had three, four years ago from the famous rare pro modes that we have. So those are the things that this mechanism can help us do.
And also maybe just to add to this topic of any commentary, like we know that for some managers, they rather just set their lineups early and don't have to do any action in the weekend. But in this case, like for the hot streak only, because we're only speaking about hot streak where you play against the game, we really feel that it doesn't really make sense to stop you from playing faster, maybe winning also several times in the same weekend, like managers love experimenting on Set. And we also plan to give you the tools to ease this new pace of the mode by, of course, notifications, maybe the ability to preset lineups across several levels. So that if you want to still just do your lineups on your Friday as usual and plan everything and just do minor tweaks to avoid the MPs or something like that, you can still play this way without having this pressure of needing to be on your phone to perform well. So we really think that it doesn't break the game in that way.
Selfishly, the ability to preset, because yeah, having, I'm not sure I'm the user who wants the notifications all throughout the weekend in order, hopefully, as I'm moving up the levels. Do you, with different streak levels, meaning if they're seven, let's say, are the rewards, how do you guys envision what the rewards will look like? Because I imagine you're not going to do seven levels of cash rewards. We have seen kind of the introduction of essence only in the first couple for these summer competitions. So how do you guys see the rewards working for those?
Yeah. So on the, at this first high level, on the prize pool side, we do plan to have a prize pool that is as good as what we have today on what we distribute. Now for what we're giving. So indeed, one, we hear the frustration of the essence steps today, the first two in limited and one in rare. And it's also frustrating because once you go down, it's out of your control. You're forced to wait two to three weeks, right? So at least in this world of anytime entry, you can go through the levels fast. So the plan is more on the button level to, again, like Set, to be able to go fast on them. We want to introduce cash as early as we can. We don't have finalized numbers now, but the goal is indeed to make the cash amounts available for targets that are at least, you know, it won't be harder than what they are today to get that cash. At least that's what we aim to do. And yeah, so that's the general direction that we're aiming for. And also in the low levels when you're grinding to get the low levels and get the essence rewards, they are a bit...
More meaningful because you can craft right away and get a player that's playing in the afternoon for you. So we want to keep that high pace kind of gameplay. For those who want to just take it easy, you can still have that, but for those who want...
Don't get me wrong, I'll take fast pace every so often, but I just don't eat it all the time, that's all. But I mean, it's great that it is an option for those who want to have it. The tricky thing that you guys have as the ones who are in charge of the direction is that there's no singular way that everybody plays Sorare. Some people want to play all the time, some people want to do once a week and that's it. And you want to be able to have an offer for all of those people. So I don't envy you guys at all of having to figure all of that out. We did get a lot of questions and I went through... I would love to admit that I went through all 500 or whatever questions it was. I didn't get that far, but there were a lot kind of about the UI and UX and Nicolas touched on it a little bit. But basically, I'm actually going to read one that was very specific because I think it kind of summarizes all of the ones that we got. But essentially, what concrete improvements are coming to the navigation, lineup building, and the score?
Yeah, great question whoever asked that. I guess because the way we're changing the nature of hot streaks, we want to do two things. One, we want to have a consistent mechanic and a very consistent experience when setting your lineups for the different game modes, right? Whether it's your missions, whether it's arena, whether it's leaderboards, whether it's hot streaks, we want to have a really clean experience on mobile first that allows you to keep those complex mechanics but allows you to have that freedom of lineup creativity. So the number one thing for us is how can we make lineup creation really seamless on a mobile first platform because the nature of anytime entry, if you're on the couch watching a game at the bar, you might want to set up a lineup right away. How do we allow you to do that from scouting a player that you might miss to buying him to setting him in a lineup right away in one seamless UX? The focus for mobile and for the overall UI/UX of the thing. So a lot of the efforts will be first and foremost focused on the anytime entry user journey. Secondly, navigation. There's also talks of how do you make a really clean interface that encompasses Sorare Set, hot streaks, leaderboards, missions, arenas, and how do we combine everything into one cohesive experience. And then the last thing is about score following. I think score following, we're pretty happy with what we have for now. I think the bigger issues and areas of experience that the users are frustrated with is on mobile scouting and buying and setting the lineups and all that. Our focus for now, I think we put a lot of investment earlier on score following and I think a real focus is going to be navigating a world where all the boards are kind of together, scouting, buying, lineup creation, setting that lineup right away in one smooth flow is going to be our focuses for UI/UX.
So you've used the term 'board' a lot and it's one of the ones that was kind of introduced to us as part of Sorare Set. What do you... how much is included in a board when you guys kind of refer to a board like that?
Great question. I mean when I say board, I'm thinking if we look at the Sorare Set, that's a board, right? That's just one kind of pathway of hot streak path. If you look at Sorare 26 with MLS, J-League, those are like for me three boards where there's a hot streak lineup. And so you already have four right there and then you add a whole thing of if we do other leagues you can get that concept of boards. And so when I say boards, I guess it's a hot streak path and how do you create a really cohesive experience that users can navigate between paths and between leagues easily while also managing their arena lineups, their leaderboard lineups and also doing missions. And can boards encompass it all is the kind of question. And make it more mobile first, a mobile game kind of feel so that one, it's easy to onboard new users who want to transition from Set to Pro and two, for users who are already on Pro, is there a world where we can world build and have a feeling like you are in Set but for the whole Sorare 27 experience.
Yeah, that makes sense. The more I hear the word, I was like, I'm just not sure everything that I think is included in the board conversation is necessarily there. But well, I think that kind of answered it. So this next question that I have is one that I'm pretty passionate about and very people are very passionate about it. But nobody seems to... there's no community agreement on this. So DNPs, where are we on it and what are your guys' thoughts heading towards?
Yeah, the most heated one as you mentioned. So one thing first for the good thing about PvE is that inherently it solves most of this issue, right? So at least for this mode, if it's anytime entry then you have less of this DNP issue. Now for the PvP side. So again, the number one most consistent thing when we look at the qualitative feedback that we get through NPS and other tools is indeed that. So we believe for Sorare 27 it's the right time to address it. So for the leaderboard as well. And so the thing, if we were to address it, we would do it in a way where we make sure that it's not breaking the game so that it would look like a sub that auto subs in. So you would set a pre-deadline and that auto subs in if one of your players didn't play and keeping the lineup valid, like you shouldn't end up with a good lineup. And it would have some restrictions. So we didn't... we're still thinking about those but example of restrictions are the cap of the player or some penalties. So these are the things we're looking at.
I think as you said, it was the right time to address this one. I think with a lot of frustration and I think we are designing a solution that can please both sides of the debate. Like we were reducing the frustration of having a DNP by allowing you to have a sixth slot and at the same time we're not making it something overpowered and not something that requires live actions that ask you to be on your phone or on web during the weekend. So I think that's where we should land and that could be the right solution for this problem.
So, I think I missed it when you started. Do you envision this being an introduction for both leaderboards and host, basically PvP and PvE?
So, on this, at least we haven't taken the decision on this one but at least for PvE, a lot of the DNP problem, a good portion of it is solved. Now you do have cases of lineups where they will be at risk if you put players playing much later. So for this, still no decision taken, but at least for PvP that's what we're looking at. For PvE it's still PvE.
Yeah, I think for PvE it's our job to teach the user to play a certain way. That's a little different than PvP. That's what I was kind of saying before where PvP you're setting that optimal high ceiling lineup whereas in PvE you're kind of playing the game based on the live actual games that are happening over the weekend and then kind of staying engaged and putting based on starting lineups and learning that way. And I think that's a better approach than trying to keep the gameplay similar in something that we don't feel like it needs to be.
Can you guys confirm what the opinions are on... because it feels like both sides and it's a very both-sided thing of like people who want DNPs to be addressed and those who don't. Is it kind of an equal number of people on each side that want this or is it just a loud minority here?
Good question. First on the data side, if you look at the data side, like how many lineups are actually kind of dead on the PvP side at least, I don't know if you know like how many DNPs on average per lineup we have but there's some games that go as high as 50% of lineups that actually has one DNP. So it means there's half of those lineups that are really not... you can't engage with them, right? You don't have a chance to really know dream even if it's tough but you don't have that chance, right? So at least that's what we see on the data side. Now for the other part, if you look at what I was saying earlier like the tough frustration, again we have a lot of tools that aggregate the data and show us in red the top one or two things every week that comes in and we do see a lot of 'please find a solution for DNPs' right? It's giving us those signals that we can't ignore. And so that's what we see on our side really qualitatively and quantitatively.
Also like a lot of people, coming from a user design perspective, a lot of people are investing and playing these lineups and then if one guy DNPs their weekend's ruined, you know, and especially for a first-time user experience jumping into leaderboards, you know, they could turn and it's not a great feeling to just do that. And 89, 90% of the time when you have a sub in it's not going to be the game changer that changes your whole lineup, but at least he keeps you in the conversation, keeps your weekend alive, and keeps you still enjoying the product. And that's what we kind of want to keep.
Do you guys... is it like a required card to put in a lineup or is it optional?
Optional. For sure. Optional. So, yeah.
