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Meet the man who spent $10,000 on Ultimate Team
Lifting the lid on once the best and most expensive Ultimate Team squads of all time.
Ever wondered what $10,000 would get you on EA Sports FC Ultimate Team? Well, wonder no more.
One of our readers has spent over $10,000 on this year’s game. He’s given us full exclusive access to his team to help us lift the lid on what it’s like to have the ultimate team.
Let’s waste no more time…
There’s a lot to unpack, so here’s what we’ll be covering in this blog:
But first, let’s set the scene.
Just how good can your team be if you spend over $10,000?
The answer: an ultimate team that’s worth over 50 million coins in-game, including the likes of Ronaldo Nazario, Johan Cryuff, Ronaldinho and Paulo Maldini.
That’s just the starting eleven… let’s not forget the players he has on his bench and reserves…
Honestly, we are not sure why he did this.
Maybe it's that some people just love a challenge.
They take the tagline of the game to heart… they play Ultimate Team because they want to build the ultimate team.
Whatever the reason, we are glad he did.
It means we can learn everything you need to know about spending $10,000 on Ultimate Team.
Our big fish reader would like to stay anonymous.
But, if you have any questions for him just email us and we can pass on the message. Please avoid asking “Can I have some money” because quite frankly, we don’t think he has any left.
How many Ultimate Team packs does $10,000 buy?
In case you don’t know, Ultimate Team packs are virtual in-game packs that contain randomised content like players and club Items. There are a variety of different packs that vary in quality and price.
Let’s start by looking at the cost of EA FC Points - which is the virtual currency used on Ultimate Team to buy packs.
Our reader says he’s spent around $10,000. Based on the prices in the below graph, that’s around 1.2 million FC points.
If we break this down, that’s:
342 Supreme Dynasties pack (the best packs you can buy) = 24,308 rare players or;
400 Jumbo Ultimate Players Pack = 16,400 rare players or;
620 Jump Rare Players Pack = 14,880 rare players or;
1,200 Rare Players Pack = 14,400 rare players
So… a lot of packs. And a lot of players.
Our reader estimates he opened around 500 packs, bagging over 18,000 players.
“I usually like to wait for EA to release special promotion packs. I stay away from the common packs in the store because I feel like the higher ticket packs give out more,” he admitted.
How much was the team worth after all $10,000 was spent?
At the time of writing this (December 2023), player prices have fallen since the launch of the game in September.
But here is a breakdown of his current first 11:
Edwin Van der Sar (90) = 700,000 coins
Ferland Mendy (87) = 2,000,000 coins
Cafu (92) = 1,700,000 coins
Carlos Alberto (91) = 1,200,000 coins
Paolo Maldini (93) = 4,100,000 coins
Ruud Gullit (90) = 5,000,000 coins
Patrick Vieira (88) = 2,000,000 coins
Caroline Hansen (91) = 2,000,000 coins
Ronaldinho (94) = 11,000,000 coins
Johan Cruyff (94) = 7,000,000 coins
Ronaldo (94) = 10,000,000 coins
Total = 46,700,000 EA FC coins.
Our reader also has 6,000,000 coins tucked away in the virtual EA FC bank.
You know… in case there’s a rainy day. We’ve all been there.
Who were the best players packed and how much were they worth?
The two best players our reader packed were Thunderstruck Ronaldinho and Trailblazers Kylian Mbappé.
Both players’ combined value at the time of packing was 15,000,000 EA FC coins.
Ronaldinho was worth 10,000,000 at the time and Mbappé 5,000,000.
Not too shabby.
How many packs did you have to buy to get a good player?
After opening around 500 packs, you’d think you would find the secret to how to increase pack luck.
Well, kinda… one interesting thing happened as our reader opened more packs.
He found the more packs he opened, the more very high-quality players he packed.
Trailblazer Kylian Mbappé and Ronaldinho were packed close to each other, along with a few other highly rated Team of the Week cards and Icons.
While it’s difficult to tell, anecdotally speaking, our reader associated this extreme pack luck with the number of packs opened.
And though this might be true, he did also pack great players more sporadically.
Lots of high-quality gold cards were packed at random times with no seemingly obvious pattern.
Some great cards came from the cheapest gold packs and very early on in his 500-pack open run.
Lessons from opening packs
1/ Open packs near the release date of the game rather than later.
When EA FC is first released, all players are worth more as player supply is limited.
This applies to all players in the game except Icons. And, in all honestly, you won’t be packing Icons most of the time.
Lionel Messi for example started at 250k and is now 50k, three months after the game was released.
Applying that logic across Ultimate Team, players are on average three times more expensive at the beginning of the game compared to three months after the game is released.
This means you should pack as many players as you can early on and sell them, giving you the biggest bang for each buck you spend.
Our reader is a veteran spender and was aware of this. This means a majority of his wealth outside of packing Ronaldinho and Mbappé came from gold premium players who were a much higher price near the release date of the EA FC 24.
2/ Pack luck seemed to get better as more packs were opened.
Pack luck is defined as the rate at which you pack ultra-high-net-worth cards.
And if you want the really big players from a pack then you should open more packs.
As with anything of this ilk, the more you open, the better your probability of winning big.
“It’s kind of obvious that the more you spend, the higher the likelihood that you’ll pack a good player. But, I feel like I get my best players when I’ve spent a lot of money in a short space of time,” our reader said.
Annoying, but obvious, advice.
3/ EA FC 24 is generous with its packs.
Oddly, our reader has spent the least on EA FC 24 compared to any other of the past five Ultimate Team games.
That’s right, $10,000 was light for the big spender this year.
Having spent two or three times that amount on previous EA Sports Ultimate Team games modes, he concluded that this year is the most generous.
He claims he has never before packed players with such high value with so “little” spent and so early on in the game.
He says his teams are usually worth 50,000,000 coins by the end of the game, not three months after the game’s release.
So… we guess that if you’re gonna start spending on Ultimate Team, now is a good time to do it.
It’s been speculated that, since EA’s separation from its FIFA branding last year, this was their attempt to secure brand loyalty from users.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Was it worth it?
Well, it depends on who you ask.
If you ask our reader… definitely!
He set a goal of having the Ultimate Team, and It’s safe to say, he achieved his goal.
But there are some unexpected consequences when you own such a ridiculous team…
Things That Happen When You Have The Ultimate Team (Some You Won’t Expect)…
1/ You win more games (obviously), but you still get beaten by better players.
Having a team worth millions is helpful when playing online.
But it doesn’t win you games automatically.
If someone is more skilled than you they still have a higher likelihood of beating you.
The reason is the best cards in the game allow you two things:
Make more mistakes and not be punished. Stronger, faster, more able defenders mean they can cover up for your mistakes more often. This doesn’t mean they can cover for you 100% of the time but more often.
Strikers are more clinical. Your opponent must make fewer mistakes.
If your opponent still makes fewer mistakes and is more clinical than you when factoring in your multi-million coin team then you’re still going to lose.
With the introduction of playstyles - unique player traits - in the game this year, EA FC players have more chance of competing against mega teams. Perhaps this year, more than any other, the game has mechanics that can be used by skilled users to overcome better teams.
This means that, while Ultimate Team is still largely pay-to-win, it’s not a closed book when it comes to who wins and loses.
What’s more, the game’s developers are including more opportunities for users to build strong teams organically. It just takes a lot longer to do but it means that the gap between good and bad teams is narrowing - if only slightly.
Nevertheless, users still get mad when they see your team line up against theirs…
2/ You receive a lot of abuse.
Oddly enough, having virtually the best team in the games puts you in the crosshairs of a lot of banter. Who would’ve thought?
This becomes particularly noticeable when you lose.
Here are some examples:
(Some messages are really funny so this is hardly a drawback).
LOL
True I guess?
LOL
3/ But… some people compliment you (kind of)
Not all the attention is bad.
Here are some examples:
4/ You play professional players more often.
You play professional footballers and professional Ultimate Team players more often.
Dominating FUT Champions and Division Rivals means the standard of opponent you face goes up.
Our reader even ended up on a few streams as a result of the people he has faced.
It’s bitter-sweet. You get to play against an interesting mix of players, but it’s probably not for the faint-hearted.
5/ Odd things happen… all the time.
An example of an odd thing happening is EA decided to give our reader 6,000,000 coins.
Why?
The Dutch Icon, Johan Cruyff was released into the game with the Tiki Taka PlayStyle+, which EA claims to be the wrong PlayStyle, so they have changed it to the Power Shot PlayStyle+.
They decided to refund all players who bought the wrong card with cash and let them keep the player!
We can’t imagine something this interesting/odd happening to someone with a less exclusive team.
It’s a classic case of the rich getting richer.
6/ It can be stressful…
Ultimate Team has a ‘transfer market’ feature which acts as a stock market but for players in the game. It’s where users can buy and sell players.
The problem is, as with any market, prices go down as quickly as they go down.
And with the continuous player additions each week, it means that most players become less valuable as time goes on.
It’s OK if you have a cheaper player but some of the price swings that occur on the elite players - the ones that you’ve seen from our reader’s team - can be immense.
To put this into context, a team worth 50,000,000 coins can up in price by 10%, which is a 5,000,000 coin increase.
The same is said when the team loses value.
So, where you allocate your Ultimate Team coins is a bigger deal than you might think.
This is compounded by EA FC’s mandatory 5% tax on transfer market sales which makes it an even bigger deal when buying and selling assets at higher prices.
So… if you don’t like your new 5,000,000 coin striker, you just cost yourself 500,000!
Wow.
“Look, there’s definitely a pay-to-win factor. But I think a lot of players are also surprised that I’m good at the game too,” our reader concludes.
He adds: “I can afford to spend this amount of money and I spent a lot of time on the game - but I wouldn't recommend others to do the same unless you enjoy it as much as I do.”
If you’re interested in novel football stories like this, be sure to sign up to the daily Route One Newsletter here. It’s where 10,000 football fans get their stay informed and entertained every day!
Team update 12 February 2024, worth 80 million coins:
This is the final team… is this the Ultimate Team?