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If the playoffs weren't a crapshoot though, major league baseball would lose a huge amount of its revenue stream. The big advertising dollars are for the playoff games, not the individual games in the regular season, especially in brackets where the pennant race is already won.
If you can predict the outcome before the first minute of the game, there's no point to showing up. Not for the fans and not for the players. Nobody fields a little league team against the New York Yankees, except in some kind of public relations match where the little league team gets something for their participation that they value (ranging from sponsorship to just getting to associate with their heros).
The WOW arena system, however, has "major league teams" warming up in the little leage brackets and any team can have a major league "ringer" on it that can warp outcomes. That was ok when you were still rewarded with something you valued for failure. S4 shows what happens when that's no longer the case. I doubt inclusion or exclusion of random elements would have the kind of impact the rating system had, but my guess would be that the trend away from randomness would in fact lower participation some among weaker players, and inclusion of more "upset" powers would increase participation of weaker players.
Whether that's good or bad for the idea of an Esport I have no idea.
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