EA update League SBCs

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you’ll no doubt know about the League ‘Squad Building Challenges’ that have come to FIFA this year. These SBCs require players to complete a full starting XI for each team in the league in exchange for pack and coin rewards, as well as a substantial coin reward and a special SBC player for completing the whole set.

While these League SBCs are fantastic, and add a whole new dimension to FIFA 17, they’ve given rise to a phenomenon we haven’t seen before - ridiculously high prices for certain bronze and silver players (and possibly even gold players - take a look at Andre Geraldes).

Take Toulouse, in Ligue 1, as an example - prior to the winter upgrades, Toulouse had a full silver defense. In order to get the 95 chemistry you need for the SBC, you needed at least two (and possibly three) of these defenders, causing their prices to skyrocket to over 15K each. After the winter upgrades, the addition of gold defenders has caused the price to drop.

However, the winter upgrades did not affect other SBCs - two of the worst SBCs were Sporting KC in the MLS, and Palermo in Calcio A. Sporting KC allows you to only use a maximum of 5 American players, causing the prices of players with other nationalities to skyrocket.

For example, let’s take a look at Emmanuel Appiah, a very average bronze card. His price hit around 20K over the last couple of weeks, solely because of the SBC. As a result, the Sporting KC SBC cost close to 60K to complete, with some of the players becoming extinct. Palermo was in a similar situation - the 343 formation means you have to use at least one wide player, causing these players to go extinct, whilst the price of all bronze and silver attackers and midfielders skyrocketed.

In an effort to combat these unreasonable prices, EA has finally made a few changes to the SBCs. As far as we know, the only two SBCs affected are the two mentioned above Sporting KC and Palermo.

The requirements for Sporting KC have been overhauled, with the limit on the number of American players being removed. This has dropped the price of this SBC by 20-40K (Appiah himself has dropped by over 15K), making the entire MLS SBC far more affordable.

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Palermo has received a formation change, moving to the less winger-heavy 3412. You can get by without using any of Palermo’s currently extinct wide players now, but this has had an unfortunate effect - all of Palermo’s Silver and Bronze midfielders and forwards are currently extinct. However, I expect them to come back onto the market over the coming weeks, as the initial hype comes to an end, making the SBC significantly cheaper than it originally was.

EA Sports

Hopefully, this is the first of many such adjustments - there are still many overpriced SBCs (Hearts, Vitoria Setubal, Toulouse), that are in desperate need of a refresh. If EA do make these changes, League SBCs, and the wonderful players they offer as rewards, would become available to everyone.

Important Note: There is currently a bug affecting which version of the SBC you see on the companion app - to see the latest version of these SBCs, remove your players, and restart the app.