Wade left ESA. Rewind 3 is far from a guaranteed event, and as much as I'd like another international event in NA, I feel like the longer we wait for someone to throw something together, the less interest outside spectators will have in international tf2 competition - let alone regular competitive tf2. We know iseries will be offering a tf2 tournament with Multiplay's backing, and at present this doesn't seem in jeopardy going forward. That's food for thought.
As it looks at the moment, froyo will continue to dominate NA, and se7en will continue to dominate EU (it's a similar story in other continents), and that's just not an interesting story line for tf2 as a game. Seeing the competition at a high level fuelled my interest in the game over anything else, and if there isn't a high level of competition on display I don't think tf2 will retain players well. There's obviously more factors involved, but that's just my 2c.