Suggested

New league type: Elite only

A lot of leagues are struggling to keep their Rookie and Pro tiers filled, with the exception of a few, usually pretty well known, active leagues. While there are other problems causing this, like the broken league search, it's also a logic result of how we progress through the game. Usually, and with most leagues, we join, do 1 or maybe 2 seasons in Rookie (if we'd do more we would hit the level cap and thus weight penalty anyway) and then we do another 1, maybe 2, season(s), given enough inactives or dummy accounts are present to keep promotion open, in Pro. But arriving in Elite we hopefully enjoy the game enough to do a lot more than those 1 or 2 seasons in Elite before retiring a team. Which means the active Elite accounts need way more places in leagues than the ones in the other 2 tiers. With Rookie a constant influx of new players can help to equalize it a bit as long as enough inactives are not given the boot immediately, but populating Pro is often a big problem.

So maybe introduce the possibilty for Elite only leagues. The idea is again at most 3 sub-leagues, all are rated Elite and set up in a 1-2 pyramid. The last 4 of the upper subleague relegate down, 2 each of the lower subleagues promote.

Given a current league keeps more than 95% filled during a season and their average Rookie level is above 10 and the Pro level 16, or as an alternative at least 9 (17 1car) teams each in both tiers sports a weight penalty, then the league owner can decide to turn the current league into this new form. The old Elite is the new upper subleague, Rookie and Pro get an instant promotion to Elite (they'd be Elite in most other league now anyway) and form the lower 2 subleagues.

A newly started Elite only league starts just with one subleague. If it's full the owner can split it into 2 at the end of the season and again if one of those is full he can enable the upper subleague which makes the best 4 of each league promote into it once.

New teams entering will be sorted into the lowest number subleague, although for the upper league they have to be at least the average level, else they are entered into one of the lower leagues if there's still an open spot.

Just a draft and probably needs some work. So enter suggestions/changes if you like the general idea and voice disapproval, preferably stating why, if you think this would be a bad idea.

Seeing it from that direction, yes, the lower level of the pyramid would look like two parallel Pro tiers just relabeled Elite. It's a bit more though because unlike Pro it's an unlimited open tier.

It's a bit of a problem, I want those Elite only leagues to still have more than 16/32 teams and some sort of a promotion/relegation competition. Also usually teams enter Elite status around level 12, and deemed too high level for Pro over level 14, but at both of those levels teams are still quite behind the teams of level 18-20 and thus in competetive leagues in Elite have to rely on luck to see a point or two in their first seasons. 

Still it kind of works now but in leagues like The MJL with level 17 and 20 in Rookie and the top Pro teams all being level 18 and 20 the development limitations and the weight penalty of those tiers feel, at least to me, a bit awkward. But the other part of the problem is that I don't want the current type of leagues just be seen as training leagues. Which is also one of the reasons I just somewhat awkwarly just called it the upper subleague and not named it Champions tier or something like that, something that might do for a draft but is not good enough in the long run.

Edit: @Dan: Got to go, will come to that later. :-)

Yes, that was also my intention by suggesting that new Elite only leagues start with only one tier, or sub league in that case. Although just adding tiers wouldn't help much if you got an interesting league for Elite players but can only add a Pro tier.

But I realize now I might be on the completely wrong track and the whole tier system isn't actually working and thus just getting rid of it and let people start leagues with just one subleague in it, if they want set min/max requirements for people joining, and people can just choose one of them freely based on min, average and max level of managers in it, average reputation and activity information and let things sort out themselves. If a league goes well then let the league hosts add another subleague above, below and maybe parallel to the current one(s). Perhaps that would be the way to go, and it would be indeed keeping it simple.

Edit: The current tier names should remain as presets with suggested settings and as a rating for subleagues according to their car DP caps and weight penalty level settings and available as a search filter to help finding appropriate leagues for the own level.