Please don't let Riot kill off online tournaments

So as you may or may not know, a few hours ago Riot released the boards post I have linked above, and the TL;DR of it is basically they're removing all of the prizing for online tournaments as of may 4th (You won't find it on the front page of the boards because Ir's sitting at something like 300 downvotes). They're doing this because they want to "Focus on connecting players to live league events" This makes no sense at all for many reasons, the first of which being that I think they're leaving out all the events and tournaments that aren't on event finder, because there are quite a lot that simply aren't put on it in the first place. Let's begin here "We created the tool years ago with the goal of helping players meet up for live events as well as giving them a workable way to organize and obtain prize support for online tournaments. Unfortunately, the tool hasn’t scaled well over the years - it’s only very sparingly used for live events"

Why do we need to get rid of online tournaments because you're promoting them with an admittedly outdated system? It says that live events are even less frequently set up, and with good reason. You don't need to provide anything for an online tournament and they're much more accessible and easy to run. There's a lot that goes into a live event and THAT'S why people choose not to do them for the most part, not because of your system. So why are we going to promote something that even less people use? They even literally admit that they're doing nothing to promote tournaments at all, then wondering why no one plays them and then trying to kill them off entirely because people aren't playing them.

"we'll be transitioning the tool away from support and prizing for online-only tournaments."

I hate to play this card, but seriously. Why not both? Why can't online and live tournaments coexist? Online tournaments are not overshadowing or taking people away from live events. Live events are few and far between, emphasis on FAR, a lot of people don't live anywhere near places where live tournaments happen, that's a reason to why they play online instead. This change would also murder already established amateur teams that live in different parts of the country (like the one I'm on) and make playing with your teammates or just your friends, nigh impossible now unless you all live in the same general area.

"Instead, we’ll refocus those resources on supporting live events across North America that can hopefully offer awesome experiences to a greater variety and number of players. We know these changes will significantly impact the small number of players currently using the tool for online prizing support, so we’re giving advance notice in order to give affected players time to prep for the change."

Focusing more on live events is great, but why are they trying to kill online tournaments? Online tournaments are often how people get into competitive league of legends in the first place (I know from experience). People are a lot more likely to try an online tournament than a live one because it's quick, it's easy and it's pretty casual usually. As a region in competitive play, NA kind of sucks. Sorry if I was a bit blunt but from an objective standpoint we're the worst major region, no one wants NA players, and everyone always whines about how the LCS doesn't have enough native talent, no one wants NA players, not even NA teams. I don't know how to fix it, but I DO know that raising the barrier of entry to the competitive scene is not the way to go. They say the problem is with their system, not the tournaments themselves, so why remove prizing? The prizing system is fine. The tournament community would LOVE if Riot reworked their event finder page, but there's no reason to remove the incentive to start playing them in the first place, it's not as if Riot is losing money giving out this RP. RP doesn't exist, it's just a number, if it were being funded with real money then removing the money while the upgrade is coming Soon™ would be a great idea. Speaking of money, lots of big tournament websites/organizers, such as Victorious Gaming, have existed for years and only exist because they prize all their tournaments with Riot money.

There's definitely a better way to fix this system without getting rid of online tournaments.