The elite crowd is nothing like the sims coaster crowd, not even remotely close.
Elite fans are 1980's old-school pc gamers who are more than happy to spend money to test/play reboots of true classics.
Coaster sim fans are late 90s gamers who likely got into the series by way of xbox 10 years ago (or pc, but I'm expecting most were xbox), and have no desire to pay through the nose just to EA another one.
This is a bad move, will generate more bad press than good and I'm expecting we'll see a change soon enough when it doesn't pan out. Regardless, don't matter to me, just saying what seems obvious to me.
Yours truly,
Axis