How Sorare scaled player visuals 10× faster with Photoroom

Life before Photoroom

• Relied on external photo agencies for background removal and retouching

• Turnaround time ranged from 12 hours to several days per batch

• "Outrageously expensive" editing costs

• Risked missing launches when images arrived only hours before deadline

Life with Photoroom

• Thousands of sports players’ headshots processed via API

• Cut editing time for background removal from days to minutes

• Reduced editing costs, no more expensive agency fees

• Keeps every photo consistent and on-brand with framing & backgrounds

• Hit launch deadlines, even with last-minute asset deliveries

Every sports season begins the same way for Sorare: with thousands of player headshots arriving from football, basketball, and baseball clubs around the world. For Jessica Assouline who has spent four years at Sorare—first in business development signing licensing deals, then shifting to operations to bring those partnerships to life—these images represent far more than just photos. They're the foundation of everything Sorare does.

"Visuals are really important here at Sorare, specifically player headshots. They're at the core of our product.” 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

Sorare is a global fantasy sports game where users buy, sell, and trade digital player cards, then use them to build teams just like real-life coaches. The real-world performance of players directly impacts game results, unlocking rewards ranging from signed jerseys to once-in-a-lifetime experiences, such as meeting Zinedine Zidane, the French football player. At the heart of this experience are the player cards themselves, and at the heart of those cards are the headshots Jessica's team processes each season.

But before Photoroom, getting those images ready for launch was anything but simple.

The hidden costs of relying on photo agencies

Before Photoroom, Sorare worked with external photo agencies to edit player headshots. The process seemed straightforward on paper: clubs and leagues would shoot media days at the start of each season, send the images to Sorare, and the agency would handle background removal and retouching. Then Sorare's tech team could create the player cards.

In reality, it was a constant source of stress.

"We’re never really certain of when these media days happen," Jessica shares. "Sometimes they happen a month before the launches, which is great because this gives us enough time for editing. But sometimes we receive them only a couple of days, if not hours, before launch."

When images arrived with just hours to spare, the agency workflow became a bottleneck. It took 24 hours to several days to get edited photos back. Even in the best cases, turnaround time was 12 hours minimum. To top it off, the process was "outrageously expensive," as Jessica puts it.

"The biggest challenges we had before Photoroom on the photo editing side were costs at first. And then the second was the time frame that it took us to get those photos edited. Depending on the agency it would take a few days to 12 hours for the shortest turnaround." 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

With an entire card creation process waiting on the other side of photo editing, any delay rippled through the whole launch timeline. For a platform where player cards are the centerpiece of the product, missing a launch deadline wasn't an option.

A chance discovery leads to an AI solution

Jessica discovered Photoroom through a friend who was using it for social media, a classic consumer use case that caught her attention.

When Sorare began exploring alternatives to its expensive agency setup, Jessica's first instinct was to look at other agencies offering lower prices. But after some evaluation, she decided to explore AI automation and its value for product photography.

She reached out to the Photoroom team, and the conversations revealed a compelling opportunity: the potential to save significant time and money through AI-powered automation.

Photoroom understood Sorare's needs from the beginning and, more importantly, had the technology to meet them.

"We were very happy with the onboarding experience at Photoroom. As soon as we signed our contract, we onboarded on a call to understand our needs and image standards. We have an account manager, and they have engineers that help us use the API." 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

Building a new workflow using Photoroom's API

Sorare's editing process is now much simpler compared to the old agency workflow:

• Sorare's team notifies their freelance editor when partner clubs send player headshots.

• The freelance editor uploads large batches of photos to the Photoroom API.

• Photoroom's AI automation handles background removal and reframing in minutes.

• The freelancer does final color retouching externally to harmonize the images, which typically have inconsistent lighting, tones, and jersey colors from Sorare’s 300+ club partners.

• Sorare receives edited images within a few hours instead of days.

The company’s image quality remains consistently high, which is a crucial factor on a platform where visuals are central to the user experience.

"We're beyond satisfied with the quality of Photoroom. One of the greatest powers of Photoroom is that it enables background editing in real time in just a few minutes. Our process is much more optimized now, and it has allowed us to save cost while maintaining the quality of our pictures." 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

Now when clubs send images just hours before a launch, the team can handle it without panic. The entire downstream card creation process moves forward quickly, ensuring launches happen on time.

The results of choosing Photoroom as a visual partner

Since integrating the Photoroom API, Sorare’s team has:

• Cut editing time from 12 hours and several days to a few minutes, specifically for background removal and photo framing.

• Reduced editing budget by cutting expensive agency fees entirely.

• Improved image consistency across their platform, as every player headshot gets processed with the same framing and background standard.

• Scaled image production using the API to process large image volumes.

“Photoroom helped us reduce our photo editing budget quite significantly while improving turnaround time. We can now process headshots in hours instead of days.” 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

Looking ahead

While Photoroom has transformed the first stage of Sorare's image editing process, Jessica and her team are already thinking about what's next.

"We're very proud of our partnership with Photoroom and are looking at ways to optimize the use case even further.” 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

Sorare is working closely with Photoroom engineers to address image lighting and color consistency challenges across its 300+ sports partners, each with its own media days and shooting conditions that create inconsistent source material.

For other companies managing high volumes of visual content, Jessica's advice is straightforward: choose the solution that can process images at scale.

"My advice to any company with a high volume of visuals that are shot with the same lighting type is to use Photoroom. The impact is quite significant on the cost side but also on the time-saving side, so I absolutely recommend using this solution." 

— Jessica Assouline, Partnership Operations Lead at Sorare

For a platform where images are the heart of the product, speed and reliability make all the difference, not just for operational efficiency, but for delivering the experience Sorare's users expect, season after season.

BONUS: Sorare is offering €150 off your first card purchases.* Use the code SORARE26 on Sorare.com, valid until May 30th, 2026.

*Market Credits give you 50% off Sorare Football or NBA cards (Auctions and Instant Buys only), valid on purchases up to €300. Terms apply.