I'm a little late to the party, so first of all, good luck Sigafoo with this first season of real competitive TF2 at RGL (lolhl). You've shown your dedication and tenacity in your previous leagues, so I'm confident you have the skills to make this 6v6 league a success.
I am still hoping for some competition though ;)
Like others before me in this thread, I was hoping to change your/RGLs mind about two things planned for this first season:
The whitelist:
Using the global whitelist instead of a modified ESEA one would be great. You could still modify it mid-season if stuff seems broken, exactly like it's mentioned in the current rules for the ESEA whitelist. Basically a RGL-version of the global whitelist, but only if it's needed. No bureaucracy required.
External casters
I get the technical concerns about allowing more people on STV, but simply attaching an STV relay yourself (a good idea anyway) or requiring 3rd party casters to bring their own relay solves this.
That just leaves the exposure for the sponsor and the stream viewer numbers. I think more streams get more people to watch a game, not less, so just request 3rd party streams to use your sponsor's assets when casting RGL games. Seems fair to me. I'm willing to provide STV relays to any caster that needs them.
To anyone unhappy with RGL or Sigafoo and thinking it's unfixable, please support those working on alternatives and actually try to help them, because it's going to take the amount of effort Sigafoo puts into RGL to deliver a better product and he's already done this before.