SOD vs TE

An extra 30-60 seconds per turn is a huge number.

Well, you can laugh at even worse things than that - so it's not an argument, just like with the football example...
If 8-10 extra minutes per game is critical to you...how many games do you play per week? And how many other players (playing on HeroesWorld) can you name who, thinking the same way, obviously treat this as e-sports?
The questions are rhetorical, since there's no point in arguing anyway.
To Alessandro
honestly - I haven't played either Light or Full, but I know about in-battle time from practice playing Heroes 5... well, it's all awful... sometimes 1 battle per turn, sometimes you have to conduct 3-4 battles with 3 heroes, and depending on the specifics of neutrals and your army/faction, it happens that you need to haul units across the map... not to stall in battle - but specifically to haul monsters - as a result, you either lose tempo or cross out some factions or combat tactics from the game, and that's a huge downside for the gameplay as a whole.