I feel like many teams could easily balance playing in both leagues with a focus on ESEA, and maybe using TFCL matches as like scrims.

Out of the 12 teams you are willing to pay flights for, 8 teams will be complete losers because there's a maximum of 4 teams that can compete at a reasonable level in NA.

If you actually have the money to back the project up, don't waste money on the 8 bottom feeder teams and bring in 4 really good teams instead, from all over the world.

idk bout that man, this season

a 6th place team beat a 5th place team
a 5th place team beat a 3rd place team
also a 4th place team beat a 2nd place team

sure not all of invite is completely competitive but outside of froyo its definitely not as cut-and-dry as u think

i do think once u get out of top 6 things get very onesided, though

That's not my point. The point is that you should spend the money getting 12 NA teams there on getting intercontinental teams so that you would have greater competition.

Makes no sense for a league based in NA to fly out EU players for a LAN.

The NA players in the Invite/Open divisions should not foot the bill for EU players to get a free ride in a league they don't contribute any money into or even play in.

I wouldn't be against watching 12 NA teams where 8-10 are of equal skill level fight it out. A lot of quality invite players are just hanging out in High Open right now because they don't want to pay invite fees or they lost motivation to keep going for the top. A new league with new prizes and a LAN could shake some of those high open sandbaggers into playing harder and putting more effort into the game again.

lets leave intercontinental tf2 to the top teams of each region and the lans that they choose to go to, we dont need this in a league lan

I think that your A and S ranks to replace open and invite needs another division to replace IM. The current situation isn't great especially when new teams have to play Invite/high IM level players on their first match and get discouraged because of it. Perhaps making an S, A, B ranks for paid and C, D ranks for not. You'd be able to raise the price a little bit for the IM replacement (B) and make more money which can be put into other costs.

I also think having your current division that is free but has a prizepool just encourages sandbagging and you cant forcibly move people up because moving them up means they have to pay to play. People who currently sandbag open do so because not only do they get practically guaranteed money but they don't want to pay the invite fee. If you regulate the divisions it means they have to play the div they belong in or not play at all. Maybe that's good but maybe not.

Again, large if true, but I have a hard time believing that a league can pay thousands and thousands of dollars of travel expenses for teams if they don't even have a finished webpage. Throwing around the 100k number when your 6's league is minuscule doesn't remind me of a legitimate league but of a scam (as this is a paid leauge).Not calling this a scam, but until your league gains some legitimacy, paid lan travel seems far fetched. If I may ask, how do you plan on turning a profit, after paying thousands for lan travel? Any strong current sponsors?
I play in the tfcl 6's league atm and enjoy it, but I really don't see this as being a legitimate opposition to ESEA.

What about actually killing ESEA and move to a league that cares about TF2 and its community, expenses, alternative gamemodes and supports them fully. Not to mention it is planning to support its own server renting and pug system, if only you were not so close-minded..

New leagues trying to take the market from ESEA isn't new. It's happened many times before, TWL, XPL, TGL, CEVO, TFCL and probably a few others but hasn't worked out. There's always been this divide in the community between Invite players loving ESEA and everyone else hating it. Esea historically has had a very rocky relationship with our community and has come close to abandoning ship several times.

There are many reasons why these other leagues failed but one of the main reasons is they don't generate enough money. If you want a good stable league you're going to have to pay for it pure in simple. The reasons this happens is because they run f2P for new teams and pay to play for better teams. This just doesn't work because the better you get the more you have to pay and it's unfair. The only way a new league can win is if they go 100% pay to play, and unless they have the balls to do that... Stick with ESEA.

The owner has said multiple times that he's not trying to compete with esea

http://etf2l.org/2017/11/17/happy-birthday-etf2l/

tbh the only reason its the european tf2 league is because it used to have prizepools and free entry. Nowadays no one would switch to a free league, and most people wouldn't pay membership for a league that will likely die due to ETF2L being an alternative.

That and ETF2L's great AC team.

competing with esea is exactly what hes going to have to do to get any kind of playerbase

ETF2L is not comparable to ESEA. Maybe UGC. No lan, less competitive, less prizes... Yes esea doesn't provide a lan anymore and that's because of fractures within the community about what league they wish to play in. ESEA dropping tf2 from the lan has greatly lowered the quality of competition for NA.

ETF2L would probably still be playing vanilla if NA hadn't gone in and shit on them badly.