For example, the B3 are arcade-mode games (like the private league), and is designed to encourage teams to try their best to win (it doesn't compete for playing time / game shape with other games, for example).
That is a valid point. But I still think there is some encouragement to win cup games and especially some key cup milestones (ie: to get a cup game during allstar week and to win the final, for example).
But with that said, surely the single biggest difference is that there typically around 150 teams in the B3, while the Cup formats must be able to work in countries with over 5000. That alone makes this sort of format unworkable.
Maybe I am missing something as I have not thought about it enough. But is this not just a scaling issue? If there are more teams you just play with the number of round robin games. And/or you play with the number of teams that advance from the round robin. I think there might be an issue with a very small number of teams but in that case you could just stick to the current format.
If, as someone said before, the key reason to make this change was to stop people from buying monster players for zero dollars, the same issue exists in the cup. Perhaps it happens less and is not as visible to the community at whole. But I have seen it happen.
But again, I may not have the full grasp of the reasons behind this format change.
Run of the Mill Canadian Manager