sigafoosamifacethere's not enough liquidity in a paid league to have evenly matched teams. since half na is ugc and half is esea it's a self fulfilling prophecy that playerbase will continue to decay with no incentive and increasingly wider skill gaps.
edit: also, yes it did.
season 26: https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=league&d=standings&division_id=3001
season 27: https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=league&d=standings&division_id=3059
That was after the league removed the league fee for open. So you only needed ESEA subscription to be able to play in the open league. I believe that season also had a crazy high turn over, about 20-30% of the open teams disbanded during the season.
Unfortunately, that bump didn't last, as only two seasons later the league lost about 40% of the player base from that peak and returned to its normal levels of ~60 teams total, which is where it's been for the last two seasons.
So while UGC definitely does take away some of the market who'd go into ESEA, because it's free, that wasn't the main issue in the drop off here. Since the players trying it out, were probably mostly players who were playing for free as well. Nor did these players jump ship to UGC. As UGC lost about 40% of its sixes player base over the last 4 seasons (same time frame.)
I think the question is, why didn't the players who could play for free in ESEA stay? Why did it only take two seasons to go back to where it started? -- Is it the format? Is it the league structure? Is it just that CSGO players don't have an interest in sixes? etc...
we get it you run a league that isnt 6s