Edited: Spelling
Edit 2: mentioning medals and fixing sign up time as it's changed
DIsclaimer: I speak on my own behalf as a player, not an EssentialsTF(ETF) staff nor on behalf of the organization. I am expressing my own opinions about the state of monthlies from my perspective as an independent stream producer, caster, and team leader. TL;DR at the bottom
I understand this is the offseason, but with 6 teams registered and only just under 24 hours left to do so at the time of positions this(and 1 team with a week to go in NA), it's really disappointing to only see 6 teams currently signed up. In order to keep running monthly tournaments while offering the significant prizepools (which imo are pretty nice for the euro scene especially, though money flowing into our game in general is really cool to see) ETF needs 16 teams minimum, and shoots for 20+ for matches that even our over the swiss stage in order to give lower teams better games later on.
On the spectating side of things, we've been trying to come up with new production ideas and roll them out to all producers (working on improving PiP replays, as well as working with pazer to see if rollout smooths similar to static camera smooths in CSGO can be implemented with path splitting, and working on getting 3rd person mid/last cameras similar to the work done at rewind II) and been recruiting more casters/producers to increase the variety of casting/observing styles (shoutouts specifically to boxcar and frootloops in NA). Understandably viewer numbers and promotion were down significantly last month due to unavailability for front page, but in Europe the series (especially playoffs) have been really good, and new anti-throwing/offclass limit break rules have been put in place to help make the NA playoffs more exciting than they have been.
Even if I wasn't ETF staff, I would still highly encourage teams to participate and would be throwing in my own rosters, even if just pug teams. I understand how hard it is to get people to commit to 5-6 hours of playing, both as someone who has worked all 6 hours of production for both days of games, and as someone who has participated and lead teams in previous ETF monthlies. Right now there's some work being done (still very early days, so right now if anything just brainstorming/early development that won't be out for at least a few months) to increase ease of signup, and to keep rosters from previous ETF tournaments as well as removing the need for players to manually enter their steamID64 (admittedly if you're using a custom URL it's a real pain in the ass to pull up steamrep for the 6-8 rostered players). These improvements will help on easing the sometimes confusing entry process, and will be a significant QOL improvement for team leaders but not something that they'll roll out if they can't get at least minimum signups. The introduction of medals soon should also serve as a nice incentive for participants, especially since previous participants will be receiving them.
I get it can be a real pain to sign up for the monthlies, and even daunting for Open and Low (and UGC/TFCL/Low-mid Open in North America)teams seeing large names like Lowpander, Se7en, froyotech, SVIFT NA/EU, Ascent NA/EU and Ora Elektro headlining these. The more teams that sign up, the more balanced games will happen as the swiss stage progresses, and the more likely it is that we get cool stuff for TF2 like 8k viewer front page finals and see more sponsors/orgs take interest in TF2. I know that in it's current state (especially since EU does not nearly have the league prizepools NA does) competitive TF2 is mainly about competition, improvement, and fun, but the fact that over double the prizepot of last season's premiership (or double RGB LAN 2's prizepool as an NA equivelent) each month is offered up and we're seeing a decrease in signups, even from premiership/high and invite/high IM tier teams is concerning and a bit saddening. Please sign up, these tournaments have crazy potential to be big highlight successes for our scene (as can be highlighted by the huge viewership during frontpaged events so far) and bring more to our little slice of eSports.
TL;DR: These tournaments bring thousands monthly to teams, get LAN-level viewer numbers when we land front page, and are going to be getting better over the next few months; just have some patience with the format and sign up regardless of your team's skill level, the more teams the more balanced matches and talent showcases have potential of happening, especially deep in groups and playoffs.