there's literally no incentive to play unless you are the best team, at which point you can barely fund yourself to LANs without fundraisers. but to be the best you have to put a lot of time and effort into the game, except putting a lot of time and effort into the game is barely worth it in the first place.
if you want to see teams becoming better, there has to be an actual incentive to do the boring stuff in playing the game (organising, practising, team talks etc.). i've done them over and over again and after 7 years of playing this game i came third in prem which granted me an amazing amount of €200 which can fund 1/10 of our lan trips on budget+ (if the money were paid out BEFORE the LAN season, which is unlikely by ETF2L standards). i realise if i win this AMAZING prize of €1000 + win s23+24 + dreamhack, there is going to be a total of like €4000, at which point you can MAYBE even afford to book hotels during your lan trips. now was that worth the amount of time you put into the game to actually become the best? probably not.
if you think that becoming the best in the game is actually worth it, you are delusional. this isn't some pro esport, i play the game because i think it's fun, and although i WANT to become the best, i neither want or can put hours on end into this game because i actually have other stuff do in my life.
now can you idiots PLEASE stfu about the "state of tf" or whatever, I don't play the game for a living and you have no rights to complain about the standard of gameplay or production quality if you don't do anything yourself to try to improve the situation (maybe make a team that can beat the prem teams, except you can't because you're also fucking terrible).