One of the most common issues that we face at the moment is that the spread between Public TF2 and Competitiv TF2 is too big and the absence of unlocks in our current system could deter people interested in the game.
I think here lies one of the greatest errors in the present discussion.
In order to generate more interest in ETF2L and competitive TF2 in general we have to advertise where people play: on pub servers!
We should reach out to existing communities and ask them to let us advertise on their websites/servers.
we should have our own public server showing people our community and playstyle.
I don’t think we should just convince a few pub players and hope that they have enough friends to tell.
We can’t afford to have an ETF2L pub server resticted only to ETF2L members by some plugin.
Why dont we make a partnership with with that guys that are running the tf2lobby system to “farm” the guys that are actually at the first step from pub to comp?

ETF2L and VanillaTV have made great progress in organizing and covering matches.
Today we have a steadily growing number of viewers as well as streamers drawing more attention to TF2.
One important thing TF2 is lacking is prizemoney.
At the moment we are lucky enough to have a few community members who generously provided money for cups to sweeten the competition and make people give that extra bit to be “THE BEST”.
Will we only play for mousemats and backpacks in the future?

At the beginning of this year we entered into a partnership with Thermaltake and advertise their products / site on the Main Page.
And there is also other advertising running quietly in the background.
ETF2L has no Spending on servers salaries and cups – the latter is always “outsourced” instead (see Excello, dignitas).
Where does the money go?
Couldn’t this money be used to increase the prize pool of ETF2L and thus making winning a season a lot more desirable?
Couldn’t this money go into regular “in house” cups to the community which would be more potential streams/casts/viewers?

Right now we could be at a turning point for european tf2.
i46 will be the biggest TF2 LAN to date, with american and european teams facing off and getting a lot of attention.
This attention should be used to get a lot more people to ETF2L and competitive TF2.
If we don’t find a way to make TF2 more attractive then wel will lose a lot of good teams after i46 and with that TF2 fans just because their heroes are not playing anymore.
What reason is there to be the best just because you’re next on the skill ladder and the top people are just too bored to play?
Only when that happens is it time to discuss the necessity of unlocks and their impact on tf2.