Dota 2

It's always been the case that only the hardcore fans watch group stages because there's so "little" at stake. They say they're trying something and I think it's pretty smart. Try to make as many matches meaningful for elimination as possible, so the average person feels like something is at stake and can choose their group to watch based on which team they like, which is then also not an overwhelming time commitment.

Let's be honest here, Group Stage could be the shittiest production quality or whatever and hardcore pro scene fans would still watch it. But like 80% of the playerbase of the game itself doesn't even care about the pro scene that much, and only tune in casually, if at all.

I totally understand them trying out a different format to try to convert more players to esport watchers.