CDL orgs clearly needed to cut costs and thus went to 4v4 ASAP. If the league was doing great the biggest orgs in the game wouldn't be rushing to cut one of their big name marketable players.

They have the power but don't let them define the narrative.

When business is going great you brag by telling people how much profit you made. When business is going bad most lie by simply saying it is going great or using some other metric, the vaguer/more obfuscated the better.

So rather than going to 4v4 cos it's the better format, which I'm told by some CoD pros is a popular sentiment, they simply use that sentiment as a narrative driver to enable them to cut costs.

The OWL/CDL formula for marketing is rather than tell you that they're amputating your leg to instead say "Great news! You have one fully functional leg!"

Never forget that the customer of these franchise leagues, right now and maybe always until things drastically change, is the org buying in. It's not the viewers or the sponsors.

Thus the job of the TO is to keep those orgs happy. That's it.

They talk about how the fans are what matters and the players are incredibly important in place of having to actually do anything for those people.

You know what they say about how much talk costs.