EA release 84+ rated TOTW SBC, but there’s a catch

On Thursday afternoon, EA dropped the latest, and possibly craziest, SBC yet - an 84+ TOTW SBC, where you can get any 84+ rated TOTW card (untradeable) that has been released in FIFA 17.

EA Sports FIFA

We know what you’re thinking - this is your chance to get that SIF Ronaldo. Or that FIF Dybala. Or if you’re a Sunderland fan, maybe packing an IF Defoe may finally bring a smile back to your face.

But are these SBCs really worth it? That’s what we are going to be looking at today.

Completing the SBC once will cost you around 50K on Playstation, and 53K on Xbox. That doesn’t seem too bad right? Especially when you could potentially pack a Ronaldo, Suarez, Messi, Lewandowski, Hazard, or another superstar. And besides, the worst player you can get is an 84-rated card, so the odds of getting one of those guys must be way higher than in a normal pack.

Let’s investigate this further. There are 320 TOTW cards that are 84 rated or higher. Of these 320 cards, 192 sell for more than 53K on the Xbox, and 200 sell for more than 54K on the Playstation.

Those don’t look like bad odds - you have 60% chance of packing a player worth more than what you spend on Xbox, and a 63% on Playstation. However, this isn’t quite right - we’re assuming that every player has an equal pack weight.

If we account for differences in pack weight, these percentages drop sharply - almost all 84 and 85 rated players are worth less than the amount you spend to complete the SBC, and these are the cards that you will be packing most often. In fact, you’ll have to pack almost exclusively 86+ rated cards, and even then, you may not turn a profit.

To better understand this, let’s adjust the pack weights as follows: let weight of a 85-rated card be 80% the weight of an 84-rated card, the weight of an 86-rated card be 80% the weight of an 85-rated card. These pack weights are still on the generous side - they suggest that packing an 84-rated card is only 16 times more likely than packing a 97-Ronaldo.

And yet, even with these favorable pack weights, you can only expect to make a profit < 30% of the time. In reality, the pack weights are almost certainly far more unfavorable, meaning that you’re even more unlikely to make a profit.

In fact, you’re not really making a profit at all - all of these cards are untradeable. That means that unless you get a player who is worth more than the cost of the SBC, and that player is one you wanted/can use, these are wasted coins. It doesn’t matter if you pack a 95-rated Lewandowski if you can’t use him - he’ll just be sitting in your club. And while there will undoubtedly be chances to use these IFs in TOTS SBCs, or other SBCs, until then they’ll just be useless cards sitting in your club.

Conclusion

As you can see, not only are you unlikely to pack a player worth more than the cost of the SBC, but any players that you don’t want/can’t use cannot be sold on. These SBCs offer you a great opportunity to convert some of the players you already have in your club into TOTW cards - with TOTS coming up, these TOTW cards could be useful for SBCs.

At the end of the day, these packs serve two main purposes for EA. They drain coins from the market, and they boost the values of 83+ rated players. Both of these factors will greatly increase the number of packs sold during TOTS.

It’s up to you to decide what is more valuable to you - the slim chance of packing a game changing player, or your coins right before the most exciting time in the FIFA cycle. I’d strongly recommend you go with the latter, save your coins, and have some fun during TOTS.