These are just my thoughts, lmk what y'all think.
What if we scrap the whole ascension and relegation nonsense because I'm ngl, the teams that are projected to ascend are pretty rough worldwide. What if they do a semi-closed Tier 2 with no ascension (but keep relegation and premier promotion) and rather do Tier 2 Masters* that have lower production that model the style of something like Ludwig x Tarik.
Now when I say Masters, obviously they'll be named something different but just something that allows T2 teams to compete with other international T2 teams. Would that still cost too much money? This gets people invested in these Masters* and also makes it so the only thing that people care about isn't the end of year ascension tournament. I feel like this model would run at a huge loss for players/orgs for like 1-2 years, but if the audience investment is there, Riot would surely invest with like team skins and stuff right? And maybe even add a bigger prize pool.
Envy vs BBL PCIFIC / QoR vs Fennel / Cubert vs Motiv
These matchups would be infinitely more hype than Split 1 playoffs followed by Split 2 playoffs followed by Split 3 playoffs only for everyone to end up only watching the asenscion tournament.