I want to point out few things from my point of view as a casual NHL player, but somewhat serious competitive player in real life sports. Feel free to disagree and shoot them down. 😄 Hope I can make my thoughts understandable in English.
1. Competitive sport should be about winning points, games, opponents, even yourself if its about making new PBs, and trying to become the best of the best. And usually only winners are rewarded, so I agree it doesn't make sense you get rewarded for participating (ie. placing 4th, 5th or so on...)
2. If you play just for the money and think: "it is important to get profit to money I invested", then virtual ice hockey isn't the right choice for the majority in our community. Better to go for some other competitive e-sports or even better: invest the money somewhere else.
3. Organizations (Sportsgamer and Kenu deserve great thanks for the run so far) need money (and motivation) to keep things running, whether it is having a working scoring platform, organizing tournaments, etc. Cause of my sport hobby, I am used to pay participating fees whenever I take part in competition and I think it is fair that people making it possible deserve some compensation for their time and effort spent. I never think about what will the prize money be, cause 9 out of 10 times there won't be any.
4. Simplifying the division system to "competitive" and "casual" sounds about the right thing to at least consider. I personally would feel totally fine to pay reasonable license fee for playing in casual league just for the thrills and having no possibility to win prize money whatsoever.
In the end of the day, I think every one of us here has spent lot more money on a lot more stupider things expecting no money in return... Anyways I wish the community a Happy New Year, lets try together to make it better than the previous year! 🫡