I would assume that CSI got a piece of the advertisers revenue, or got some from sponsors for the stream at the world. OR, they ate the cost of providing the stream just to get their name out there and to get as many people as possible to visit their youtube page.
Maybe with the smaller field and tourney, there is no advertiser money or the amount of traffic to their site isn't expected to be as large...
either way, I am sure it costs plenty for these guys to live stream a tourney...got to make their nut somehow...
Recent World 10 Ball has Predator as main partner/sponsor which can cover streaming costs
Maybe it is expensive cos CSI has big media team with 2 to 3 commentators. Manpower is expensive.
Camera/video/ hardware on other hand is cheaper. It is not extremely expensive to just stream videos with minimum frills.
Compare that to what Kozoom did at World 9 ball some years ago- they had high quality videos on almost all tables- no commentators (except for final few matches on TV table) and it was free.
So yes, it is shocking state of pool industry that the big tournaments are free streams but the small /regional tournaments are paid streams.
How do you bring in new mega mainstream viewers if it is PPV and not free?.