Off-Topic with Laird: Who decides what the game actually is?

Lairdinho discusses a number of different topics, including whether Sorare (the company) or Sorare managers decide what game we’re actually playing.

Intro and outro music: Jazzeton by Quincas Moreira https://youtu.be/ukY_lkZ63ug

#sorare #fantasysports #cardcollecting

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Hello and welcome into off topic I’m Andrew lar you can find me as Laro on so rare uh today to talk about something that I’ve been thinking about since yesterday’s strategy show and no it is not Friday it is Tuesday this time of year gets a little wonky with scheduling

Other people who have like real jobs and lives and so that’s why there’s no limited time only today but I did want to talk about this and I didn’t want to wait until Friday and so here we are uh thanks everyone coming in Quinny what’s up thanks for coming in Andy said he

Decides because he owns his game Ben Johnson on the podium as well um Ricardo’s here Mike Baston Micah pompe what’s up everyone Stephen appreciate all you guys coming in in um we’ll get into this everybody’s getting excited about their loot or reward boxes excuse me excuse me um but yeah there

Are a few things I want to talk about today and so it feels a little weird saying hey this is um off topic but here’s a very specific topic I want to talk about but I do I do want to talk about it Mickey fu is not sports movie

Time it’s not I will have somebody else that’ll be a discussion with someone else but this did actually um come from yesterday’s strategy show less of our talk about thresholds and more about the rewards and from what I’ve seen uh people who are opening rewards because

They came out 31 minutes ago there not that many people who are fired up about um their rewards speaking of which hey Haber what’s up uh so this is actually going to be about rewards because well I mean we’ll get there or maybe we should start there and then

I’ll go off topic to what I actually want to talk about but yeah the rewards is a weird thing because um it feels like every so often we go through this spell where everyone thinks their rewards suck and we go through this period of they have to fix

The rewards how is this guy in tier 2 or whatever I had that a few weeks ago with a tier three I won in something um All-Star rare plus I won a tier three and it was some guy who doesn’t start for upin and it’s like how

Does that happen how is that guy Alfred Finn bogus uh get into the tier three pool and I’m going to try to pull this up here and what I realized was like so I I decided I didn’t want to like get overly upset about it because I just had never

Heard of the guy let me see if I can here it is so this is the guy Alfred Finn bogus and I was like oh he’s Icelandic let me hit up the soare Scandinavia Discord and everyone was like I’ve never heard of this guy and I was like oh great um like

These are his scores I guess he maybe he maybe people liked him in this range here and so his price went up a little bit I don’t really know it just it was like incredibly he’s 34 and it was just like it was a bummer it didn’t really

Feel good and as you can see he’s now a a low tier four and I won him as a as kind of a medium tier three um so it was like it wasn’t great but anyway um and so the Haber said I’m realizing I’m not getting excited for rewards despite

Being on a rewards hater has made me real depressed oh rewards heater excuse me excuse me that was kind of a accidental punt or accidental truth anyway um so the uh ruie said rewards suck let’s play for money well you can play for money uh Mar Lele what’s up good to see

You as well hope you have a great Christmas um so the Quinny says hold him I I am holding him because he’s worthless uh so nobody wants to Moi said he was amazing and her here in vean I mean great but he’s not there now and he sucks now but anyway

Apologies to him I’m sure he’s a very nice guy anyway so we go through these these periods where we get bad rewards and then they fix them and it it just feels like sometimes they’re like okay we’re going to do good rewards for a little bit and then we do bad ones for

A little bit and who knows but we feel like it feels like we’re in this period right now where people are getting poor rewards including um I don’t want to call anyone out um in terms of what they won and whether they were happy or not I will say that

One of the somebody pointed this out in a Discord I’m in that sorer will now show us I don’t even know how they got here Play rewards you can see what people won uh after they’ve claimed them so this is a a nice oh like like doku was the is it

Just just the podiums oh maybe it’s just Podium but doku was first for U23 rare verts and U23 rare Pro rare plus ah thought I would still getting missing that one up um and so wow inia thirdd in Champion man sorry I’m just looking at these now

Kane and both Champion Europe rare and rare plus verman first in Challenger I saw somebody got a verman from their reward box which is very unexpected I got uh this guy Chidi OG Ben from Luton I finished like 4,600 something or others but anyway so we’re in this

Period right now where people are not super excited about rewards and part of it is that card prices are down so much that they that they oh habber City entered the wrong cap 270 and didn’t get a reward box sorry man it is weird that they don’t put them together that they like

Separated them uh but anyway so card prices are down so people aren’t excited when they win a prize and they’re like oh this is worth three bucks and it’s like a tier two rare that’s being dramatic but it’s not that it’s not that bad trust me but there

Are the addition of dnp rewards seems to have messed everything up and so the difficulty is that people are not as excited for reward day which is supposed to be like the most fun part of the game it’s like winning rewards and that was a lot of the conversation

Yesterday was just that the it’s really reward valuation seems to be the problem or excuse me card valuation seems to be the problem particularly with dnp cards because basically stale price data is influencing how what tier card should go in and that therefore pushes other cards

Either up or down that shouldn’t be in a tier and hopefully they can fix that and one of the things that we said yesterday was I don’t know the exact line but it was something like they don’t understand their game and I’ve been thinking about that a

Lot today and I wasn’t going to do an off topic today but then I kept thinking about it and I was like I don’t I haven’t thought this all the way through and so what better place to think it through than out out loud in front of

Other people who might be able to help me figure out what I’m trying to think but basically what the question is is that like who’s who what did I call this who decides what this game actually is and it made me think back the fact that so rare have pretty much

Always I don’t even want to call it marketed because we know that the marketing efforts are not that great but they’ve always kind of build themselves as we’re a fantasy platform that uses player cards that are nfts in our game and you can buy these nfts to play our game for free

And when there was a huge Bull Run in nfts you know crypto and then nfts and there was a a huge push back in from the community that S rare didn’t take advantage of of the fact that they were nfts and trying to jump in on the fomo that people were

Having of not owning like apes and rocks and dinosaur bones or whatever the hell people were buying nfts of and I think a lot of that was because they kept saying we’re a fantasy at the time like we’re a fantasy football platform and so the that has really changed and when the

Earling howand when the first earling howand unique was auctioned and it went for 265 eth it was like 600 and something thousand like it was a lot of money we did an auction watch it was fun as hell and the there was nothing from so rare publicly like Laing the fact that they

Sold a single nft for $650,000 I think that’s how much it was I know it was 265 and change eth but and so there was kind of this wait why aren’t we going after these nft Crypt Bros yeah 2651 678 th000 excuse me and so the thought was like why aren’t they

Going after these Crypt Bros who can come in and like buy all our nfts and we’ll get rich and I think fundamentally the they didn’t publicly say this but I think it was like hey that’s just not what we do we’re not just like this random nft company that is minting cards

So that people can buy them and sell them for 3x because they’re the next people who show up and a lot of people compared it to Top Shot because in Top Shot you know you open a $100 pack you get a single moment you sold it for 10

Grand and you were like yeah this top shot’s awesome and so really never got into that and and at its core it was a fantasy game with nfts and lately they have been talking about prices a little more which which seems weird on its surface because their prices are down and so

It’s like do you really want to talk about the fact that you sold an earling howand unique card for what was the last one $887,000 when the one before that was a $100,000 more and so I I actually don’t even know what to think about that part of it but I do

Think that when there was an nft boom and the prices of our cards exploded and and granted now not this didn’t happen to everybody like you had to be on the platform by then I happen to be there so I I benefited from that I did not sell a

Jia Felix for 15 eth or whatever it ended up going for certainly wasn’t 100 eth but if you were a fantasy platform where buying nfts allowed you to play and the cheapest cards that you were selling were like $300 and $400 your goal of being this Mass Market

Product could not be realized and because of that they came out with the limited cards in order to kind of like allow for a cheaper entry point like fundamentally that was the reason that they realized if they had a significant user Spike using only rare cards meaning if rare cards were the the

Least scarce card the game just can’t scale they’re just not enough cards for the potential users and if the buyin price literally for like one lineup is two grand how many people are going to be able to buy in so limited cards came and those prices were really high and it was

Clear let me rephrase it should have been clear and and plenty of people said this at the time that there going to be a ton of limited cards out there at some point there will be 10,000 well the example at the time was in is because they still had the PSG

License but like they’re going to be 10,000 kimmick at some point and the Hope was we’ll have more users and so prices won’t decline as much and there were some sensible people who were like hey if the users don’t keep growing as fast as they are there’s

Going to be more Supply than demand and when that happens card prices go down now it seems like we’ve gotten we’ve like greatly accelerated that over the last year 18 months I’ll even say 18 months because I think it was before the the global Club excuse me

So so we got to a point where card prices are going down and we’re all complaining about that and if you if you go back to so rare fundamentally thinking we are a fantasy game where you buy cards to play at some point you need card prices at an entrylevel

Price that anyone would feel comfortable buying in and for those of us who were already I don’t I didn’t want to use the word invested because it’s not really that but for those of us who are already invested that’s a real kick in the stomach of we know that you bought that card

For $300 $150 whatever but it needs to be cheaper for more people to play and if that’s the period we’re in right now and it it really doesn’t feel good to have things that used to be valuable that are not anymore and part of that is not just the cards that we

Own but also the cards that we can win so when you were playing this game and you like I can win a $220,000 rare card it’s very different when it’s I can win a $2,000 rare card and so I feel like either that part is missing that so rare don’t understand

That this significant drop in price inv value means that what they’re rewarding us is less valuable and therefore it makes it harder for us to want to buy into it or it’s our fault for pushing prices up and seeing it seeing them decline when the users didn’t keep uh growing and

So the the way that I was looking at what I said what we were saying yesterday that they don’t understand the game maybe they don’t understand how we all play the game but maybe the game is actually working how they think it should work and a reminder it’s their game they came

Up with it they set the rules like we don’t we play the game and so anything that they like their opinion of what the game should look like Trump’s ours because they’re the ones with the keys and so that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last day of maybe we’re not

Playing the same game that they built we’ve taken advantage of the rules basically and like fundamentally and there are a ton of comments and I’m going to get to them I just need to get this one last thought out so because somebody said they agree with Nano and I

Now I have to go back and see what Nano said probably about how good-looking I am but anyway so the it’s almost like they came out and we like here’s this game and they had some users come in and they were like this game is really cool

And and Sora is like buy these cards so you give us money to buy these cards and then you play this game and you can win things like more cards or some eth and that’s all they think they’re like okay so our users are going to go

Buy these cards and then we’ll give them rewards based on how well their cards do that’s it that’s the game but but we all know that’s not really the game or that’s not only the game because we can own our game you can do whatever you want with

Your cards which really just means selling them or trading them and the idea is I going to have this card that I paid $10 for and maybe I can sell it for 15 and once that becomes a regular part of the game now we’re diverging from what S

Rare think is the game and again I’m not I don’t want to speak for S rare I haven’t talked to anyone that this is what they think but like fundamentally it feels like that’s the case that they said this is the game buy cards from us win cards

And E and cash or eth really at the time and we said I’m GNA buy cards from you and then I’m going to sell him to that guy for more and then I can buy more cards or I can win cards and but I’m going to sell

Them to that guy and the more that we think about buying and selling the more it’s all about card values which is now still going further away from what so rare think which is no you just want to you know you buy our cards and you play the game and then you

Win you win rewards yay and then you can maybe you can maybe three of your cards can be traded for one of that guy’s cards and then yeah everybody’s happy and it’s like the the card values don’t matter to them that’s how it feels right like it it feels like so

Rare really don’t care what cards are worth as long as like we buy cards to play their game you know you buy golf clubs to play golf you’re not making any money off that and so it just feels like the more that we focus on card values the further we are from

Understanding what so rare think the game is and obviously that’s a gigantic problem for both sides because as values go down the less we want to buy these cards to win more cards or more or whatever and so I that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last day all right let me

Get back to the chat because it has been bumping here so thank you everybody for for coming in and I AP I’m waiting for somebody to say I said something wrong right at the beginning um Mike basson’s asking why isn’t Zora here so germ said maybe playing their

Game will help them learn so I think it’s a really difficult I think it’s difficult for them to to see what we see specifically because they work for so rare like they can play the game that’s fine like do we even I don’t even know who the users are like do they even

Enter the threshold the cap 240 like if you work for them would you would you want other people like taking money from your company or you know winning like I I it’s almost like they know too much or they’ve been sold this idea of this is just a

Fantasy game and just go buy your cards which are Collectibles and you own forever but like play the game and and like I don’t know if if the people who who work there are like flipping cards or if they fundamentally just like sell a card in order to buy

One or or how they do like I don’t I don’t know I don’t know who they who it is all right let’s catch up Mike basson could the current problem linked to the fact that some of the initial investors are probably at the stage in their contracts where they they do some

Returns I don’t think so I don’t think it it’s anything like that like I don’t think the I think investors always want companies to make money obviously but there have been so many web three I mean not even web three there been so many companies that have gone bankrupt in the last year

That like the fact that s is still around is a positive for investors and so I don’t think that they’re sitting there like I’m ready for my dividend like I just don’t think it’s there Ben Johnson I honestly think that the game has too many people who identify as investors instead of players

Of this fun Fantasy game so so Ben I agree with you and I I don’t think so rare ever that that’s dramatic I don’t think so rare really thought they were an investment platform um like it was and and I’ve said this in other places and people have said this

In the chat before like soare is a place you can make money it’s not a place you will make money and everyone joins thinking they can make money and obviously it’s it can’t happen we can’t all make a ton of money like eventually we run out of people to

Sell cards too and so but I do think that the game would benefit if there were more people who were coming in to play a fantasy game and like that’s it buy these cards play this Fantasy game you can turn these cards into other cards you can win

Cards but like play you’re here to play a fantasy sports game and the the problem is they have so many users who have made money on this platform that that’s just think we we think that that should continue forever um Marco Sullivan said you can’t change the motto from a collectible game

Into a fun Fantasy game when a huge amount of early players were sold on this being a collectible nft game so I don’t I don’t think that’s any different like it was sold as a as a fantasy game that you play with Collectibles and I think they still think

That and generally Collectibles take a long time to be valuable Collectibles are not collectible early it’s when they’re old as and then all of a sudden people are like oh that’s cool I’d like that and so we know that the these things aren’t Collectibles yet like the collection game is so were

Better at the fantasy game like fundamentally like they’re like collect to help you in the game Mark said they went after crypto people initially to Hype it up as an nft project and that caused the initial spike in prices so I think I think that’s right but I also

Think that they went after crypto people because they were comfortable with nfts and it was easier to convert people who were into and familiar with nfts than it was getting fantasy sports players to get into nfts if that makes sense and so so they had to do that like they

There’s no way the game exist today if they were went to a bunch of fantasy Sports and they’re like hey buy these nfts and people are like I don’t even what is an nft whereas if you went to the crypto people you Bas they basically tried to find the crypto people who are

Interested in sports football really just football and then it was like oh fantasy football and then it just kind of goes from you have to you have to start somewhere and I think that was right I think they were right to go after the cry saying they went after

Crypto people also sounds so weird like they they went to the crypto people who they went to the people who were knowledgeable about what nfts were and they said would you like to buy these with football players on them and play this game and enough people said

Yes what got ZM star s wants to be a rational Market Fantasy game with an irrational user base yeah Nano said it’s less about understanding the game and more about them not understanding the psychographics psychographics of their customers so so yes I agree with you

There but it but maybe we’re I was going to say maybe we’re playing the game wrong but that’s not really what I mean I think we I think the game got away from them or the platform got away from them and that things that they didn’t think were important became super important to

Their users and I think that instead of adjusting the game for their users they maintained what their core strategy was the entire time and we did not adjust to that and I don’t think that’s right or wrong and I don’t know which one has to move but it can’t continue that way like

You can’t have a business that’s like this is what we are and all of their customers are like no actually you’re this and it just stays that way at some point one of them has to change and obviously there are many more of us than

There are them so we’re like well if we walk away the business is gone so they should obviously change it to benefit us but of course benefiting us too much means the business can’t exist but I do feel like there there’s been this over the years

It’s not new but over the years there’s basically been a fraction fraction that’s not the word I’m looking for faction split anyway there’s basically been a split between what so rare think they are and what the users think so rare is and that Gap is dangerous because it now leads to them making

Changes in the game that the users don’t necessarily want And sometimes the changes are done so that they can they think it’s to get more users the problem is is that it’s at the expense of their existing users who are probably a great Pathway to new users if they saw more eye to eye I’m so far behind in the chat I’m

Sorry guys FF thinker Sean Thorp if there was another boom I would be selling up and waiting for the downturn for me it’s a fantasy game where you want to test yourself versus either other users or the game I there are so many people I know

That that have said that they would sell up if there was another boom Ben said if we have 1 million users enter Allstar limited how many rewards will be given a score of 500 will be a tier four so I don’t even think it’s worth thinking about that

Now and I’ve said that for a while that projecting so rare out for five years and thinking that what we have today will be what we have in four or five years is just not healthy like it’s not healthy because no business is exactly the same unless

You’re like a pizza place and you just like oh we just keep making pizza but we’ve obviously seen them do more like they’re giving out more rewards than just cards like the issue has always been at some point you’re not going to have enough cards to reward and so what

We’ve seen recently including today with reward boxes they are giving us things that are not just cards ironically I want a card in my reward box this week but but they’re they’re moving in a direction where they’re rewarding different things and so I actually don’t think rewards will be a

Problem I don’t really mean that card rewards like running out of card rewards I don’t think will be a problem okay Mike so you think so are you thinking that they do not want new customers anymore because lower value valuations do not appeal to High Roller

So that is another man there’s like 75 things that we can go through today I think what we should see is a significantly bigger gap between limited and super rare maybe rares even like just the way that we have 10 times more limiteds than rares we’re

Going to just see so many more limited cards than rares and I think what we’re effectively going to see is that limited turns into what I think that they have always envisioned that it’s a lowcost entry point into the game and once you’re ready to move up you can get the more

Expensive rares super rares and we all say well rare and super rare prices are low also which they are right now but if there is a a boom of users I realize it’s a humongous if but if you have a bunch of people going into limiteds like

Eventually they’ll move up and we’ll see they don’t all move up literally 13 minutes behind on the comments I apologize guys Mark says s’s Direction has changed after they hired a bunch of people who never understood the original user base or the original selling point of so rare I I think that they

Grew so they obviously grew quickly because they raised all this money but part of the reason they raised all this money is because they were like we’re going to grow and it I agree that some of the hires just didn’t work out and it was almost like

They hired a bunch of people who were used to being in traditional fantasy sports companies and so rare has always marketed themselves as anything but they’re not just like your traditional fantasy sports company and I think that there was a kind of a loss of Direction and I think they’re fixing it

Maybe Stephen said good thing about the box is you can give more rewards while give the same amount of cards exactly exactly Haber said in in all my time on so rare I’ve never seen them promote rare super rare or unique it’s always limited always promoting the lowest

Entry rich people exist too so uh I think that’s right and I think I think the reason they do that is because they feel they’re in a user acquisition period and if that’s the case you you there are more people who can buy a $20 card than a $2,000 card and

So I think that’s why I think that’s why they focus on on limiteds and frankly I don’t know how many people they want coming into the game and immediately going to super rare and unique like they want people to learn the game so that they’re not buying thousand cards

And then they’re dead not the people the card value Marco San said focusing on user growth instead of focusing on Revenue hence the introduction of limited scarcity and a huge supply limit in NBA and MLB I mean they everything that we keep saying is they need more users so I I think it’s

Really it’s really uh hypocritical to be like no no you’re focusing way too much on getting new people like that’s what we need we need more people to play because the more people that play the more can buy we can dump our cards off of um just kidding

Um Stephen said s want a larger user based seams instead of high more risky high rollers um I mean they obviously want them um Stevens yeah they’re using Amazon like any other startup cheap prices to attract the masses I I don’t think it’s that well I mean maybe it

Is Sean said as a relative newbie I never would have joined S rare on the old prices so it was either stick with the old format or mass Market in comparison with old users exactly the number of people and like my friends who are like hey like they they

Know I work for S Sor data and like oh what what’s it do with the cards how much does it cost to play and like before limiteds I was like yeah it’s like $2,000 but you have to buy like some dudes from the K league and the J

League and Le of MX and they were like why and I was like well because they cuz like in is $225,000 like how many people are you selling on the game like that Daniel said is anyone having fun personally I’m having a great time but it doesn’t seem like that’s a common

Opinion now Daniel you you do you man Um Haber said I think you’re being too kind or insulting what did I say 20 minutes a go um Andy said he’s never seen a more depressed user base I think a lot of people never had fun with sare but they had fun making money great line great

Line server said it’s hard to really know what they want we have imperfect information for example they may care they may care about card prices because they’re paying out high amounts of cash or maybe they have plenty of cash the like I don’t I think that they care about

Um they care about selling cards for a lot of money it’s almost like it’s like they really care that auction values are really high well that’s actually I don’t even I don’t think I don’t know like fundamentally we don’t know what they think is a priority and so but card

Values hit this this is actually going to sound very strange like card values hit us more than it hits them which is ironic since that’s their only Revenue stream like that’s how they pay bills is is selling cards but they can always just sell more cards right like they can increase the

Auction rate and just sell more and there are enough people like set to buy these cards and they may not sell for a high price but if you’re doing enough of them back to the Amazon thing whereas like we don’t have endless cards to sell

We have what we have and if they used to be worth a thousand and now they’re worth 300 like that’s not so fun okay Um so Haber said so rare should know what their platform is they simply cannot not know to not know at this point is is to sign the platform to death which is worrying like Heber what I’m so that’s my whole thing right now is I think they know what they think

Their platform is and they know they’ve built the platform to what they think it should be and we have changed the platform we have changed what we think the platform should be because of of what previously happened that a lot of us made money with these

Cards and so we thought that was the game and we thought that was the platform bu these NFS sell them for more and they have always maintained that they’re a fantasy platform with Collectibles and so again it’s it they they know it’s like they know what it should be and we

Know what it is or it’s vice versa but we both can’t be right if because it seems to be like it’s counter Nikki said the nft boom was in 2021 was otherworldly the amount of 10,000 Stickman collections selling oh 10 Stickman collections selling for $1,000 of money was the most

Unsustainable in the world a lot of people from that world went into so rare so that is absolutely true and what’s funny is that so rare users at the time were pissed that so rare didn’t do more to try to get those thousands of dollars and

I think it was it was one of those that like we were more sustainable not having those people but it was really frustrating to be like hey I have this really cool collectible card but somebody’s paying hundreds of thousand dollars for a picture of a

Rock why why are my cards not worth what The Rock was worth or the you know drawing of a rock um Mark says does anyone hear pitch soer the friends I don’t because of the falling prices and I don’t want them to be angry or sad with me if the cards

They bought become less valuable in a few weeks time a follow-up question what’s the best way to pitch so rare to our friends and family Mark Lea just like kills it with the questions I have to say but so all right I’m gonna go through all of the questions because I

Keep falling behind but somebody remind me about Mark’s question all right let’s see um need slow-mo in the chat seriously Mike okay uh Bitcoin hey something Sor should have done from the start of the platform is require x amount of new cards in every competition there’s no reason to buy

Cards if you have a built your gallery now so yes but I think that’s like a total hindsight suggestion like they can’t do anything about that now and I don’t think they obviously foresaw that um and it’s tough to foresee that when you have so many users coming in

It’s like it’s not a problem because you’re just selling cards anyway all right sorry um somebody was apologizing and I don’t know why uh sir I’m still undecided whether or not that works for Unique only nine likes guys come on you don’t have to like so rare just like the

Video Mike said groby third keeper is my tier three reward been on the bench once this season seen the bench once this season but he U23 until next July so I have this theory that when they added dnp rewards except this started earlier they went back to the

Old system and so tier three is like the last okay uh Blue Tomato said they can’t sell unlimited cards at least if they stick to the scarcities which is true Um Mark said it’s not is that not their entire business model card prices if their card prices go to zero they then they raise Zero from the auctions yes yes yes but it’s more like don’t don’t think if it’s going to zero just thinking of if it’s less if they sell

Two cards for $10 or one card for $10 the $10 is the important thing okay okay let me go back to Mark Mark’s question I C caught up on the chat I skipped a bunch though so uh uh oh do they care about falling prices oh selling it to your friends

So this is why I I think this is where the the difference that I think comes in another thing that I’ve been thinking about so the oh man surver said we’re just speculating they didn’t foresee decrease for new purchasing but we don’t know there was a lot of talk about platform

Sustainability in year one specifically that issue yeah that’s not that’s I don’t know I don’t know about that I wasn’t back around back so so I think that um that this the selling point of S rare goes back to to how so rare think we play the game and that’s you buy

Cards and you use those cards to play in a fantasy game and so you know how much you paid for your cards but it it almost doesn’t Ma so we know what we paid for our cards and that’s basically like an entry to the platform and we know that play

Fantasy Football for free you know no no cost to enter but so the if if fundamentally the so rare is a place where you buy cards to play a fantasy game once you buy the cards the value of those cards does not matter now I I know it matters just bear with me

Here so you use those cards in a fantasy game to win more cards and you can sell those cards that’s how you like realize your return the problem is if you are used to seeing your card values go up meaning not the cards you’ve won but the cards you

Bought now it’s a different game and it almost feels like that’s the step they’ve completed missed that I it I don’t know that they know that they think this way like I want to be very clear about that I have not talked to anyone in Sora about that I am

Dangerously speculating here but we’re all friends here nobody’s paying attention but if fundamentally you’re not you don’t resell the cards you bought then how you perform in the fantasy game is the most important thing in terms of making some sort of return on your return on your investment and if that’s the

Case then your current card values don’t matter like they shouldn’t matter because like you bought the cards and the value of what you won matters because you can sell that but like you’re exist and I realize how dumb that sounds that like only rewarded cards Val rewarded card values

Matter but I kind of think that’s what they must believe that your success in the game is not how much you sold the cards you bought for how much you sold the cards you bought excuse me but how much you sold your rewards for so if you bought $100 worth of cards

And you wanton a $20 reward now $20 is your return not $20 and whatever your $100 starting point was was worth now and so if that’s if that’s the view internally that hey buy these cards play this game and earn from your cards which is not reselling your cards but winning cards

You start to think like oh maybe what they’re doing kind of makes sense not not that’s throw that out throw that out not that it makes sense but you can sort of understand why there’s not a an emphasis from the company to make sure values are so high and

So you know you can use the cards you bought and turn them into other card you know better cards or whatever but it’s just it’s fundamentally I think the game that that was built is different than the game that we play and we really need to figure out a way

To get those two things closer either they need to recognize it and change things so that they understand what what so rare managers really want and if if the if you’re here and you’re like what we all want is just Roi I just want to make as money as much money as possible

Then you got to off somewhere else like this is not the place to come to like make boatloads of money you would have made more money go elsewhere during the nft boom than you would have S rare like that again that was like a fundamental complaint people got rich playing so

Rare and they were like we should be so much richer apes are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars and they were like but are these so rare cards are only worth like thousands or tens of thousands like people legitimately complained about it like so rare has never

Been in from the nft standpoint like the best place to go if all you wanted to do was make money and so they built this like really engaging Fantasy game and way too many people were like yeah it’s a fun game and all but like I just care

What I win I just care how much money I make and that’s not the platform so tried make and it’s not what and again it doesn’t that doesn’t apply to everyone but it does apply to a lot people who joined when I joined and who have galleries like me

That are worth more than we put in because we happen to join early and it just feels like everything they’ve done since then is runs counter to the success that we’ve had and that obviously angers people angers those people because it’s like whoa whoa whoa I’ve played your game this whole

Time and I make this much money and like this is this works and they’re like yeah this but this isn’t the what we built this is not like we’re going to do this change because we think more people will like it and we’re like no no pay me

More surfus thinks Thresh olds are unsustainably good Daniel Cooper said I think it’s pretty good I think it’s pretty good in the rest of the game obviously actual returns depend on if you’re good at the game or not but the percentage Roi of my gallery value each week is

Great I should specify that I’m a bang average manager Micky said it’s basically DFS and or betting pay an entry fee to try winning money back so nobody think like yes that that was always the thing that bothered me so much was how they build themselves as this free-to-play Fantasy

Game that you fundamentally could not play without buying something aside from the common game but they always said that like free to enter you’re like I would like to enter and they were like great buy those cards and you can enter and I was like Oh I thought it was free

Like yeah the game is free but you got to buy your nfts Nano said it’s not about getting rich but people do Play Sober to win something worth winning it’s similar to Poker as much he loves the game Phil Ivy isn’t spending 8 hours at the table to

Win five it’s I was exaggerating I agree I completely agree with you it’s not about getting rich even though everyone who plays dreams of getting rich on so rare and having a gallery that just prints each week and you can just get your rewards sell them off for couple

Thousand bucks every game week and people that’s I mean people want that um and so that’s that’s what people like yeah it’s not about getting rich but it’s about making money having more money and being able to make money on so rare so you can go out to nice

Dinner or go on a nice holiday or doing something but it’s fundamentally about making money and that’s not I don’t think that’s the game soare thought they made or or thinks they’re making right now And yeah that’s the problem Andy black as gross as this sounds this should be good I’m down for an additional percentage Market correction that means prices that means a dip if anybody is looking for what Market correction means if it means we finally hit a point where

Prices are stable and performance on the field slash speculation are what affects values so I would love to do that without the D without the market correction um I think without but yeah obviously I don’t know prices seem pretty low right now um like prices seem

Attractive for new users to come in and you’re like yeah you have to buy Cards and they’re like how much are the cards and you’re like yeah you could probably get like enough cards for like 5050 bucks and for a lot of people that’s pretty good And yeah Mickey said if prices had been like this the entire time how would it have been would people have been happy so it’s I’m it’s funny you say that and I I feel bad if he said this in private and I can’t remember if it was

Or not but I’m going to blow him up anyway so I was talking to PSU fans too about this and he said if he was to join now like where the prices were he would have been perfectly cool coming in and buying cards and like playing the whole

Game and he would have been happy about it but obviously because he joined previously he was also pre-boom so he has seen his Gallery value significantly skyrise Skyrocket Sky ra rise increase and has obviously seen it tumble and it’s kind of a obviously it’s a mental thing that if you’re used to

Winning $110,000 worth of rewards in a month and now it’s a thousand think that’s a big difference and that that’s a lot of the people who are upset now are those people who have probably made boatloads off their rewards but the value of of their cards is down and so that that

Just doesn’t feel good Mark said can so rare be a game which people seek out to make a good Roi we have scarcity built into the system only so many people would be able to play overare with the current scarcities if it was mainstream um I’m not sure what you’re

Trying to say I feel like that’s two different points but I think realistically we all want to be in a position where there are too many users because that means everyone right now probably did really well um server said I’d be fine with a dip as well if it meant price stability I’m

Just worried that more of a dip really affects their cash flow which puts thresholds at risk in my opinion but again we don’t really know so and Mark said if enough people want to compete for the top cash prizes and there’s too much demand and not enough Supply should that not push up

Valuations making it easier to make good Roi yeah I mean we all know more users means like that’s the key and I think so rare are trying to figure out like what do we do if we don’t get a huge increase in users and so yeah I mean that’s that’s what it

Comes to but fundamentally what I keep thinking is are we playing a game that’s different than what s are trying to build and if the answer is yes then they’re going to continue to do things that run counter to what we want because effectively what we want is

To get get more money from them and as a business they would like to keep more of that money or at least make more and and so I it’s more like they do they not understand their own game or do we not understand that we’re playing the

Wrong game that they built something and we made it something else but they have no interest in making it better in our view as opposed to just fundamentally what they thought they were building like you can make the argument that their goal has never changed from the day they

Launched that we want to be this Global fantasy This Global sports brand with a fantasy game and with Collectibles and all this stuff and that really hasn’t changed um sorry I’m just texting um the good place said Amazon was conceived only as a bookstore if they are building something we think is

Different I think they need to Pivot and Moy said should they remove leagues not sure why they added second division in the first place some people would be annoyed of course and they have contracts but that would be a way to reduce Supply I don’t think a supply reduction is necessary

And frankly I think if they could they would get every league in the world that’s kind of the game that like they they made a global fantasy football game and so they want to be able to have options in any possible place um and that’s kind of the point I mean

Literally when you go to so rare it says Global fantasy football and they how many teams are we up to now 373 licensed teams they had the Russian Premier League too I wonder if they those listed here no like they had they could have had three I don’t know how many there 20

Close to 400 and so I think that I think the the combination of falling prices excuse me falling values and rewards that that people are upset about is what’s creating this like really negative sentiment right now and they they can definitely do something in the short term to fix the rewards

And yeah arou said do we need the Saudi league for the potential of Saudi Wales absolutely not NOP I don’t think it makes any sense whatsoever I do love all the speculation by everybody about whether sare would even be allowed in Saudi Arabia um but no I don’t think no I don’t think

So I would guess most people in Saudi Arabia don’t even not that they don’t watch the Saudi league but they like they can if they really wanted to play so rare right now with with the teams with like the clubs that are known worldwide like they could play right now if they wanted

To Daniel said if we tried not moaning and putting everyone in a bad mood about the game that’s a good point Dario said they need to improve their communication so they can make themselves known in the world because at the moment it’s a niche game the problem

Is is that like fantasy sports are or Niche Niche Niche sorry it’s a very Niche thing and it always will be like Fant football is not Niche but fantasy football is and it always will be like fantasy basketball is very Niche versus just basketball and so I think getting it more known is

Always a plus but Nano said I think card issuance has been well managed overall by so rare yeah I agree isn’t fantasy sports big in the US it it is but this is where it’s big is the problem like fantasy sports is not big basically anywhere else and fantasy sports themselves are I

Don’t think are growing as quickly in the US anymore because sports betting is now becoming more legal and fantasy sports was kind of your I don’t want call a gateway to sports betting because sports betting has been illegal but it’s legal in a lot of places now including where I live and

So like fantasy sports will not continue to grow like it has in the last 30 years in the US Jeremy said we need the A- League I mean that’s three people I know who want the A- League four if you include trip and B Blue Tomato said fantasy sports is

Better than betting I mean it’s it is now it’s more popular but I I I think those will converge very soon um yeah I just think fundamentally it’s I keep going back to what I said kind of at the beginning JVC said Sports bending can be a gateway to fantasy sports

Too and the good places also in for the A- League uh I don’t think it will be many more people will go fantasy sports to betting than the other way around Jeremy said the 2026 US World Cup might be a big turn for Fantasy Football it might uh I don’t

Know Mark back to your topic hell yeah get back on topic here on off topic is the game not ultimately dedicated by us the users and whatever brings us joy some of us are s so5 mad some are collectors only and some are Traders only some are all three

So I don’t know I I don’t know if so rare have a responsibility to change their their the core of their company because their users play play it differently like I’m trying to think of like a an absurd analogy but like I just don’t think it makes sense

Anything I come up with I was G to say like if everybody started playing football but if you hit the post it was a goal like would FIFA be like okay let’s do that like no just because we play it differently doesn’t mean it’s the way that they want it

Um soccer Silverback said why don’t they get investment through companies to sponsor certain divisions the Fanatics 240 league for example or any company they feel has a great marketing budget so I’m glad you brought that up uh because I was talking about that earlier today um um sponsorships like

That s is not big enough and the fact that they’re like a global audience makes it tougher to find like they’re only a handful not a handful but there aren’t that many companies that can go to a brand and say we want to Market ourselves by sponsoring whatever it is to a global

Audience and pay lots of money for an audience that really isn’t that big I think we kind of forget that that it’s just s is not that big like they’re not that many users like cap 240 limited I think is still the highest like the highest excuse me the most entered

Competition and there are 27,000 people who have entered it 27,000 what company is going to give S rare tens of thousands or hundreds of or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get 27,000 people who might look at it yeah Blue Tomato said it because nobody sponsors for $100,000 for 5,000 people who

Play and like that’s the problem and bluet again sponsoring is very uh Regional and so good play said I feel like gambling companies would sponsor because users they want are similar users on here I don’t think so were to go down that route either but but again you’re you’re what gambling

Company and there are some so I’ll say that um the the gambling like you you will what gambling company is going to spend money to advertise on a on a global game where like maybe 20% of the users could even use their product like the so rare is not even remotely close to

Being big enough for that and and that’s the problem um yeah Blue Tomato said that’s why there’re LED adverts in the stadium because they can change the ad depending on the country where they stream the game exactly um Jeremy said football stats or scouting companies could find their

Market here but yeah would not bring in big money like who opta Daniel Cooper said Nell should sponsor them that’s a good idea yeah uh Mark said do you remember the idea which was pitched in the past where it would essentially grow to become a social media site for passionate sports

Fans I assume that was one of the ideas and like Discord I mean just think of the communities that have propped up that like any of us are in like like micro communities these Discord groups that we like it it is a very social thing in the fact that we don’t actually

Leave our house to do it but um surface said so rare is Big complex and always evolving regardless of where it’s been and where it ends up it’s been a fascinating and fun ride that has changed my life and I’m glad I got to be a part of it

Same but I mean I literally have like a full-time job around it so rare survival is very important to me which is probably why people think I say things that I do Um yeah so I don’t know I don’t know where that leads us other than I I do think that so rare need to get a better idea of of how how how users are not like using their game but I think there’s there’s almost a lack of recognition that what they

Built is or what they thought they built is what they built and we need to bridge that Gap so that they understand what users are coming from and that the winning winning on the game should be fun and if it’s fun we’ll spend money to make it to like continue that fun but

Once it goes stale it makes it really hard to want to do anything on the platform And that’s what like obviously what they don’t want and the number of people I saw within 30 minutes of rewards coming out that were just like super disappointed except the one guy that won a veerman Limited in the loot or reward box excuse me that’s like address

That uh off topic did you enjoy France I loved it yeah France was great um I have no drinking stories no not a big I’m not a big drinker myself people I work with aren’t but yeah it was fun to be with all the people that I work with every day since

I obviously don’t see any body that I work with um but yeah I am extremely fortunate to work for S rare data and work specifically with the people that I do and it was great it was a great trip and I’m happy to be home as

Well um Mark said did you get to go to a football game in France yes we saw Leon Toll House Leon won 3-0 for their first home victory victory of the season and yeah server said what is the SD streaming schedule this week next and into early

January I’m glad you brought that up since obviously today was supposed to be limited time only tomorrow is supposed to be collection time only but I think we might have to reschedule that for a second time and to be honest I have considered doing an off topic everyday

For the rest of the year and just have that be it although there is the gameweek previews tomorrow so gameweek previews and off topics um people were very excited about um PSU fan 2’s uh teen drama and team romcom opinions at the end of the strategy show yesterday and

So I might have him on and we’ll do that and the the yeah I think I might do that I’m not sure it feels like this time time of year is a little weird for a bunch of people And the why not just make it all off topic uh Mike said when pineapple cutting oh I do we do have to do that oh there’ll be so rare Andrews that’s I mean that’s basically a uh basically off topic but um Blue Tomato said there has to be a

Christmas and a New Year’s Eve stream I can assure you will not be a Christmas stream he wants a drunk cast I feel like s after dark has kind of taken over the drunkcast Poss Market but uh we’ll see maybe I’ll try to get myself

On on that uh Bros cono I had my first Podium ever this weekend in champ America limited and posted my highest ever score of 482 for sixth in U23 wow the satisfaction of Podium and a great score meant more to me than the Roars that is awesome awesome congratulations on that 482

Geez 12 days of larus yeah maybe maybe um yeah I mean if you guys want anything else I can do that but like I don’t know it just felt like this time of year people are kind of working and so rare is kind of weird now there not that many games and I

I don’t I don’t know I was looking at my lineup Builder I’m like oh there’s nothing really interesting going on and I don’t want to do a strategy show of like how to get through the holiday period because that sounds like more of a mental health question than anything

Else but um I don’t know we’ll see we’ll see maybe we’ll do like I can you tell that I really am kind of up in the air about all of it but obviously there will be no strategy shown next Monday that is Christmas day we’ll be taking that off

And I am going to take some time off next week so um there’s that Maly I didn’t say that the Scottish Premiership was not interesting I just there’s just not enough not enough leagues and games going on like it’s one thing if we’re like oh there’s so many games how do you

Prioritize this and here’s how you do and like there’s just that’s just not going on right now kind of a nice way to toh to do that Roman said less games equals more time to watch Sor data now we’re talking now we’re talking um but yeah I’m going to do that and if

There are any people that you guys think I should have on to talk to I’d be happy to do that I kind of feel like I should do that through the end of the year I realize it’s only the 19th at least while I’m taping this so

Um so yeah if there’s anyone on like reach out to me on Twitter I have my handle down there uh there we go andrewm or you can find me on Discord any of that uh I’m just going to do some random things with my gallery I’m going to do

Something probably really detrimental in the coming days um so I can talk about that as well um but yeah so yeah we’ll cut off there um thanks for everyone thank you everyone for coming I I still don’t really know how I feel about all of this

But I appreciate you guys allowing me to talk through that because I still don’t really know how I feel and but it does seem like we need to figure that out of what’s going on with s So yeah thank you everybody if you could please like subscribe all that

Good stuff shout out to Quinny who I believe was first in if I remember way back when and yeah I’ll be back tomorrow for the gameweek preview uh that’ll be at 9 o’clock in the morning for Me 2 o’clock in the UK 3 o’clock in the rest

Of Europe and uh yeah I’ll see you guys Tomorrow