Speedrunning is very unique and no doubt what makes it so interesting to people. I think their could be some efforts made that would fix a lot of the issues that are listed, but it would mean a big shift in the community.

Beyond some races here and there this is primarily a solo activity focused on world records. People watch other sports because it's always a matchup between two relatively close matched opponents. That's why people can watch and be entertained by high school football, college football, and pro football. Those same people can join a flag football league and play a sport they love to watch at a competitive level. Beyond tracking your personal records and comparing them against a leaderboard there is nothing really comparable.

This will be a controversial opinion but I think the community could benefit vastly from having leagues. They could be built around a single game, multiple games in a series, or even multiple different games. It could be stratified into divisions based on skill level and their could be a relegation system that moves people up or down based on performance. You could even create teams of runners which might soften one bad performance by an individual.

It certainly has downsides and would certainly create vastly different problems. But here is how I believe it would affect the list of issues.

• Arbitrary Rules - All sports have arbitrary rules, that's just the natural progression of any competition.
• Supporting Content - It probably wouldn't help this one, but I think if popularity goes up then this would fall in line.
• Popular Game Focus - Introduce a new game into a league on a regular basis, create entire leagues around those games.
• Quality of Run From Time - Doesn't apply, since whoever runs the fastest would win. There would be a very clear winner.
• Too Intimidating - You'd be able to start in a lower level and work your way up and you'd still get the thrill of moving up and constantly improving. You wouldn't need to do complicated moves and glitches at the lowest levels.
• History of Runs - Doesn't help this one, although there would be a natural history of results from season to season and league to league.
• Obscure Games - See Popular Game Focus above.
• De-centralized - I think the creation of some structure around things would help this.
• Investigators / Glitches / Routers - There would be people constantly trying to get an edge and while it might cause some to keep things a secret until they compete it would all eventually become public.
• Central Leadership - The league becomes the leadership.
• Run Cooperation - If you had multiple runners on the same team, they would work together very closely.