I agree. This is my post cut and pasted from another one of Johnny's threads
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I think we as fans want to see the best of the best play. We don't care to see the local hero (unless he is local to us) play Corey or Archer or Busty.... We want to see Corey play Archer, and Archer play Busty, and every match in a tournament be of that caliber.
I say cut out the 64 and 128 man fields that are fluff. The current model is the fluff pays for the top guys that cash. But the fans don't care about the fluff, they only watch the big guys. Make the whole tournament ONLY the big guys. Make it limited to 16 players for now. If the whole sport grows, open it to 32 players. But today, I think it can only support 16 players.
A few entities are doing this now:
1. TAR with their one on one action matches of the big guys
2. Accu-Stats with their Make it Happen events of only the big guys
3. Diamond with their Big Foot events, that, via the $1000 entry fee, only the big guys enter
4. Griffin is hinting towards doing the same thing on his latest podcast, only having a specific small number of handpicked guys to be in his pro events.
Call this 16 player field the pro tour.
If it takes off, you can have qualifiers for it. Joe Tuckers ABC league can be the qualifier. The top finishers in his national championship can take future spots that open up in the filed of 16. Every year, the bottom quarter performers of the "pro tour" are replaced by the top performers on Tucker's ABC tour.
Or, have a system like Glen is talking about to determine who is in or out.
You can easily just vote in the top 16 in the first year or two, we all know who they are.
But the main point is, however you get the top 16 guys, is to make a product that is marketable to the fans, and the sponsors. The fans don't care about Joe Shmo. The fans want to see the top guys, and that's it. And if the fans show up, there is a tiny chance the sponsors will too, and then the whole thing grows.
This whole line of thinking requires breaking out of the current paradigm we are in, of large fields filled with fluff.
My railbird 3 cents