Personal, I know for a fact Relic is making two new AAA games, DoW3 + one FTP cross platform/mobile game using the unity engine. So this help explain why COH2 have not been supported as well it could have been.
Unfortunately, IMO the marketing team behind COH has not taken full advantage of these ESL tournaments to draw in new players. Either Relic has to continue making more money from current owners or expanding the player base.
Also for 3 years old game, players can legally buy cheap copies (secondary market) to the COH2 base game from resellers for 7-9$ using g2g shield for safer transactions.
https://www.g2a.com/company-of-heroes-2-steam-cdkey-global.html
I hope the COH2 marketing team understand Steam discounts and Humble Bundle invite speculative purchases, where game keys are farmed by resellers with the intention of selling them later for a profit. There are plenty of resellers that make a living just farming keys and virtual assets. This is referred to as the secondary/grey market.
Strangely, SEGA/Relic is overreacting to War Spoils farming and not making enough from DLC commanders. This collective hurt everyone which don't farm. The potential primary player base+viewers for an eSport game is not going to be War Spoils farmers nor hardcore RTS players, but average RTS players that only play a couple of games per day at most. As the popular SC2 streamer Destiny has said;
it is undeniable that the more popular your game is and the more people you have playing it, the greater your viewership will be for your tournaments. This establishes a very important, often-ignored link between the professional and casual gaming scene: more casual gamers means a healthier professional scene.https://blog.destiny.gg/starcraft-2-legacy-into-the-void/
What SEGA/Relic need to understand is that if the average players have to log in for many games each day. Then he often won't log in at all because playing a few games for War Spoils drops or higher ladder rank is negligible. That's why COH2 need a two reward system like WoT, CS GO or DOTA2. One built for the average player and a new Prestige Ranking system to reward hardcore RTS players with cosmetics on reset like DOTA2.
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Trophy
SEGA/Relic should be asking themselves, why are new players not joining this fun game? What can we do making this game more accessible to the mainstream market? How can we make more money from UI customization that doesn't affect actual gameplay? How do we smooth out the learning curve making the game easy to play, hard to master?
At very least they could have made COH1 base game free to play (or sold for 1$) for 3 months during ESL. Right now new players can get the humble bundle deal COH1+DoW1 for 1$:
https://www.humblebundle.com/sega-strategy-bundle
A very nice humble bundle deal and charity incentive for new players but comes too late making any big buzz around COH eSport.
2013 sale numbers before SEGA’s Acquisition
As a series Warhammer 40k Dawn of War has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, whilst the “Company of Heroes” series, a real time strategy game based on the modern history of warfare from World War II and after, has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.Including 2013-present steam sales and the COH1 has sold well over 5 million copies.
http://blogs.sega.com/2013/01/24/notice-of-segas-acquisition-of-relic-entertainment-and-some-ips-owned-by-thq-inc/
COH2 in comparison:
Sega (Online services: 2013-present)
Owners: 1,771,903
http://steamspy.com/app/231430
"Owned" means "Sold", right?http://steamspy.com/about
No. "Owned" means "owned". It includes games bought on Steam, bought in retail and then activated on Steam, bought in bundles, recieved through promotions or as a gift and so on. It also includes copies temporarily given away on "free weekends", so take care when coming to conclusions about sales or revenue.
By looking at the steamspy stats, very few buys COH2 at the full sale price. Only during marketing campaigns with 75% off etc. will new players join.
To be fair COH2 bad launch in 2013 is not all SEGAs fault. Lack of funding from THQ that was going bankrupt really messed up a lot of things for Relic.