DannThe least Valve could do is pay back to the community that brings them in MILLIONS of dollars in revenue. They take a 10% cut of all steam community sales for TF2 and unusuals worth hundreds even thousands of dollars trade hands every day, not to mention all the keys and hats and paints bought every day in the Mann Co Store. The fact they make so much money from the store should not be a motive to NOT make comp more known about but the very opposite.
I mean, despite what you may think, Valve doesn't owe the competitive community anything. To say that the tf2 community as a whole wants Valve to support a competitive scene is a bit one-sided considering that tf.tv + ugc are an incredibly small subset of tf2 players. Valve is a business, they are better off promoting their products that have established competitive scenes.
I am still failing to understand the argument that TF2 competitive is only as small as it is because no one knows about it. Its far more likely that it isn't well followed because A) watching tf2 matches on stream is not enjoyable compared to the alternatives B) Because Counter Strike and Dota are inherently competitive in the sense that they built their competitive scenes to their large following without large third party support.
The difference is that the counter strike mod community built themselves into the massive comp scene they were back in the day. It is crazy to think that CS is only a competitive game because Valve decided "to give back to the community" by adding a competitive matchmaking system in GO. MOBAs, in the same way, are inherently competitive.
Finally, if it was put to a vote, i would guess that the tf2 community would rather have a massive mann co sale or a new drop scheme as some vague "repayment" for their past purchases rather than a matchmaking system.