[Emperor Newt]

*edit disclaimer*
This is largely written from the perspective on what most people understand under the term "esports" and "esports game". Maybe SOE uses another definition, I'm shortly addressing this in the last paragraph.
*end of edit*

As much as I have been involved in esports as a player as well administrating for years at a big eSport plattform, I still have my doubts. I fear that SOE is underestimating how costly esports can be and how little positive outcome can come out of it.

For one, as mentioned in the video, forcing to be an esports rarely works. Ever. EA has tried this in the past again and again, especially with their RTS titles. They put a lot of money into tournaments for those titles. They bought slots for those games at major tournaments and so on. Did it help? No. The games were dead once the funding ended. Some of them were even "esports suitable", but the "demand" simply wasn't there. And you cannot predict or force this demand. And esports game has to be able to survive on it's own, even when the funding end. Because if it does, the funding does not end. It might seem like a paradox but it's how it is.

The reason for failure of esports titles are several. For one, it's incredibly hard to build an "esports game". Even if you get the cirteria right (like spectator modes, and replays (which I doubt are somewhere near working in PS2)) you cannot predict an esports success.

Also stuff like timing and promotion is incredibly important. That's actually one of the few criteria were I think SOE might be successfull.

Another important point is, if you create a seperate esports game that works outside of the vanilla game that didn't work all too well in the past either. It's only a temporary "fix" for making a not-so-competetive game into a competetive game. Examples for this being the pro-mods used in Quake or Unreal Tournament. The problem being that they are a different game. They require rebalancing due to changes in team and map size and so on. Once the vanilla game and the "esport" game vary significantly people will stop playing one or the other. Mostly in the past it has been the vanilla game people loose interest (as new games come out) and then there is no new players coming in into the pro-mod and it dies a few years later. In terms of a F2P game I think it might be the other way round. A casual player won't care all too much for the competetive aspect and will never enter it. The competetive players will then lack a new input of players and the mode will bleed teams over the months/years and die out.
The only way to counter this is: funding, funding, funding so that it may eventually work out in the long run. I don't know if SOE has the money and the will to spend a lot of money only for the possibility that some day in the future those investments will pay out.

Also there are other issues: has one ever wondered how they would balance the whole thing? With cert unlocks we have the problem that those also mean having more power. It's nothing unbalanced but a stock Reaver vs a A2A Mossi, I think we all know how this will turn out.
So basically an esports mode has to be balanced somehow, which by the amount of unlocks is a hell of a job. A simple BR check won't do it. A solution would be that in eSports mode everything is unlocked. But then "preofessional" teams would not need to pay a single cent to have everything at their disposal. I doubt SOE is planning on that.

Then there are other points you have to keep in mind. Like team size. The "big warfare" shooters like the Battlefield series always start with 8vs8 in ladders because these are team sizes the games were build around. Problem being: managing 8+ people to train on a regular basis and have them all being online for matches is pain in the ass and never works out in the long run. All those ladders are then dropped shortly after launch due to too few teams and matches and are replaced by 4 to 5 man teams. And those, well, they simply aren't as much fun as it would be with 8 or more. Also the balancing often isn't quiet right if you change team sizes.
eSports with more then eight people is incredibly hard to pull of. The only current game I know being able to do this is World of Tanks, and even there it's down to 7 and it's not unlikely that the next season it will be down to 6 players.
There is a reason why almost all big esports games have a team size of 4 to 5 people. It's not a random number someone pulled out of their youknowwhere.

It might be a good marketing move but I doubt that it will be a thing that will be around for long. For this to happen the whole esports idea seems to artifically attached to the game itself. It could work, but I think chances for that happening are pretty slim.
We have seen more suitable eSports games fail misserably in the past.

So from my point of view, the chances of PS2 becoming a "regular" esports game as we know it are pretty slim to none. So if SOE does as Hamma mentioned in the video with several outfits battling it out in a seperate area which is not open all the time... where is this an esport? This is nothing the "casual" user can participate in. Maybe not even smaller or less known outfits. This is a marketing event, not an esports. One of the reasons why LoL is so big in esports is because every player who starts playing can participate in "LoL eSports" from the getgo. It's not like the eSport is something that exists outside of the vanilla game or runs only special times a week. Even if you are only a casual LoL player you are still participating in the Lol eSports, just on a amateur level. Just like in soccer/football. But it get's you interested because those "pros" actually doing the exact same stuff you are doing.
The more you pull an eSports outside of the vanilla game, the more players loose interest in following this.

It's nice that it should not intereferre with the normal player, but if it does not interfere enough with the normal player it's hardly an eSports game. So maybe the problem in the whole discussion is that the term is just wrong, it's not an eSports they are going for.
So yes, I agree with Hamma. A "spectator" event would make sense as a marketing event. But as an "eSports", which is open to everybody, this does not make much sense. At all.

If they want some better community feedback on this, they need to clarify what they are actually planning to do.