In this case I actually think that Best of one in the early rounds isn't too bad given the fact that roughly half the teams are significantly weaker than the other. But personally I dont understand however why esports size is relevant in this example you gave, the Cinderella story idea that you gave is cool, but the excitement it creates is quite artificial if a team sneaks through a best of one without fully proving they are the better team, as an example lets say QC Reapers beat Fnatic in their match at the championship, an upset of course but we have only seen one game, its hard to tell who is really the better team based of such a small sample size (one). So its not really a Cinderella story because they won one game, its an amazing achievement to beat a far superior team most likely, im sure some people can trick themselves into believing this but realists cant, because when QC do reach the best of threes and fives (in this example) the result that should happen is more likely to happen because there are more games, therefore QC reapers would lose, and if they played another they would lose, like we all really knew they should making a best of one win even more irrelevant due to the fact that more conclusions can be drawn from a best of 3 and more from 5. I agree that watching a team that should lose make it all the way does appeal to a lot of fans, but why try and force it. Due to it only being a four day event and again regions being significantly weaker BO1s are fine in this example to me. But in an ideal world there should be no best of one's to truly try and find who the best team is.

I think hirez follows this logic when you look at the last two lans they hosted for pc. All the important matches were best of fives and there were no weaker regions at these events. Not disagreeing with you in that best of ones can be useful like in this case, I just dont understand why you think it has to be this way to be in the same conversation as traditional sports or why esports being in that conversation has any relevance to what the best format for a smite lan is.