I'm gonna get minus-fragged for what I'm about to say, but the invite teams not wanting to play in an unproven league with less separation of skill and no LAN to meet up with the best teams is reasonable. Why would they want to play against people who are much worse than they are (no offence)? It's not fun for them and not fun for the people being rolled. Some people like to throw the "play the game for fun" argument around, but for them playing on even grounds against teams with similar skill levels /is fun/. I can understand less divisions takes the fun and challenge away, so I assume that's why they didn't initially signup. I'm just assuming though, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (in that case I'll shut up and apologize)
This is just really awful decision making in my opinion and again lots of people will disagree with me on this but that's fine. Just answer me, why would you all suddenly decide to join CEVO, a league that has failed in the past? Just because ESEA, the main ground for competition in NA (with a lan, even grounds for the players and entertainment for the viewers) has made their mistakes and one rogue employee who was sued did something that didn't affect the TF2 community whatsoever? Multiple small irks they've been trying to improve?
Sure ESEA has made their mistakes (what company doesn't do this) that make you scratch your head, but from what I've heard they're really trying to step it with a better client team and management in general, operating at a loss and even then still giving away things for free. I'm not saying you shouldn't play in CEVO, I'm just saying dropping ESEA completely in favor of CEVO in a leap of faith is a bad move.