The devs are balancing around a trickle down theory that means balancing around pro play to make the matches more enjoyable to watch. Meanwhile real gameplay experience suffers from it as Overwatch is design as a casual game.
As much as we all want or claim Overwatch to be competitive the stats show otherwise. More players play casually aka QP. The game’s biggest growth spike was before competitive came out.
Pro play even shows signs of this as their competitive gameplay seems to suffer. If half of the roster was deleted it wouldn’t affect pro matches. Not their comps or their strategies perhaps even so much as their currently record of wins and losses. Why? Because the pros only play half the roster. Making everything else seem like bad design of unviable. Even their level of teamwork and synergy is so far beyond that of a casual player that trying to copy them ends up very bad in the hands of those who do not have the same level of skill. Lets not forget the amount of exploits the pros use in their matches to achieve wins. Which once again casual players do not utilize.
All in all this game wasn’t ready for a league. It still was trying to identify itself within its own boundaries and should have cleaned itself up first before moving on to such big dreams.