With the previous system, skin sales for the teams were probably very one-sided, and some teams perhaps were more diluted in sales because they weren't performing too well and weren't making too much of an effort on social media to garner attention. That's the business standpoint I can see coming out of "fewer teams": you will have a closer-knit competition for sales.
I imagine that from a competitive standpoint, open qualifications will mean a wider variety of teams can compete to get to a Masters or even Champs rather than suffer in Tier 2. There will be a lot more competitive crossover between Tier 1 and former Tier 1 orgs, as well as what we knew as Tier 2 orgs.
This direction for VCT might go horribly if the franchised teams don't do very well and if the opens have limited slots for each regional stage. I much prefer CS2's Major format where you have 32 teams because more teams give more opportunity for a team we haven't seen much of to rise out of nowhere.