I wouldn't say this is that unbelievable. If you compare it to other types of tournaments. Most have some kind of entry fee and winner takes all (or most). Texas Hold-Em for example, no monthly fee but 3 drinks will cover that, and at least in an on-line game you don't have the travel/hotel expense. With the amount of adults that play this game, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a huge success.

Anytime they try to push casual gaming into a CPL situation, it will fail. Hell, WCG shut their doors last year after lack of interest/revenue to support it despite featuring the first WoW championship. It's pretty obvious nobody wants to watch terrible PvP.

So lets do some maths here:
2 qualifier rounds: 2*15€*3 players = 90 € per Team.
I dunno mow much teams will compete, but if only about 2k worldwide compete then thats about 180k €. And additional to that u hav to pay monthly fees.. and dont tell me the "we hav to keep our servers up" 'n shit again.. look at guildwars for that purpose.

So lets do some maths here:
2 qualifier rounds: 2*15€*3 players = 90 € per Team.
I dunno mow much teams will compete, but if only about 2k worldwide compete then thats about 180k €. And additional to that u hav to pay monthly fees.. and dont tell me the "we hav to keep our servers up" 'n shit again.. look at guildwars for that purpose.

For a shot to win 75k cash and other stuff for a grand total of $120,000 every 6 weeks that is well worth it. I mean you spend about that much on one dinner out or a movie.

As I read your post i just thouht "ow wtf did WoW finally manage to balance things in PvP?!" but then i found this point:

"Each qualifier round will have a per-competitor entry fee -- €15/£12 in Europe"
rofl @ paying for balanced competition. Monthly subscription PLUS entre fee is just unbelievable.