Playing devil’s advocate here.
In theory, as an OW player, only your goal would have changed, right?
Let’s say only the top 20% of Contenders players are good enough to play for Academy and above.
As more OWL teams enter the scene, and as each OWL team create their Academy teams, it should be easier and easier for top Contenders talents to enter Academy teams aka the ones that are good enough to deserve it.
Previously with only 8 Academy teams from the 12 OWL S1 teams, we had minimally 64 slots for the top Contenders talent. Everyone in Contenders wants to be in an Academy as it’s a liveable salary.
There are 7 Contenders regions- if every team has 6 players, that’s a total of 502 Contenders players. Probably more like 550-600, since there are teams with 7-8 men rosters. Remember, 64 of these are Academy players.
Say only the top 20% deserves Academy- that means 100 players should be in an Academy team and paid a fair salary. Unfortunately, people who deserves it through skills might not make it in because there’s a limited amount of slots. So there’s supply but not quite the demand.
The new system means there are a total of 16 NA Contenders teams and 8 in the other regions. That means 384 Contenders players. However, there will be more Academy teams too. It’s likely there will be 15-20 Academy teams next year. That means at least 90 players and quite likely more will be in an Academy team. That’s top 25% with less competition because there are less Contenders players.
Approach 1: All Contenders teams should be able to make a living off it, even non-Academy teams. That would need Blizzard to prop it up somewhat. Because viewership and prize pool is relatively low, no organisation would be willing to spend that much on a team in Contenders. Remember, Blizzard is spending 3.2mil USD on Contenders right now every year. Off just what the bottom placed Contenders team is getting in NA- 300 dollars per person per month for Bye Week player for 2017, assuming they get back into Contenders from Trials, Blizzard would need to quadruple their budget for Contenders for prize winnings to be sufficient. Even if they go the “higher quality production for better viewerships for more orgs” route, point is budget for Contenders is still bound to increase ludicrously for higher quality production, LAN events, bigger prize pool.
Would it be better to create an environment where there's enough Academy teams for top players to fight for their slots?
So, you have Blizzard doing-
Approach 2: Make sure there are less Contenders teams so the arguably “weaker players” are cut out, make Academy team an aim and then support third party tournaments for weaker players to thrive and grow into stronger “Contenders-level” players, that would then fight for an Academy spot. You have less Contenders players, but a higher likelihood that a deserving Contenders player would get into an Academy team if they are good enough, out of sheer numbers.