Without spectators - the final price per person will increase approximately twofold for each player. People are paying their own cash (not donating, but specifically paying). They have a right to a voice. We just need to calculate its value (conventionally, two or three times less).
There is a big difference between a stream audience with donations and the mandatory injection of one's own cash into an event. Donations are voluntary. Paying the base fee at a set price is not. Without spectators - the payment level for each player increases accordingly. In recent years, spectators accounted for 40-50%.

Now regarding the championship that took place in Georgia.
18 games. Of those, 6 games were played on SoD. And this is considering that the mix was incomplete: there were more HotA templates than SoD templates.
It's clear that the statistical sample is insignificantly small, but even based on it, it's obvious that it's too early to write off SoD in the CIS format.