When I semi-necro'ed this, I didn't mean to devolve it into a vitriol-filled thread. (We have plenty of others for that already, thank you.
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For those teams potentially affected by this change, I think we know it's coming, "soon(tm)". Whether it be next year (I think unlikely in the extreme), or something along the timeline of Duke Nuke'em Forever, who's to say?
For now I'm looking at this as a long term planning and budgeting item. (Eg as we enter our second year do we look at a 2nd regional now, where would we go, what kind of cost are we looking at, etc.) Having an idea of the team geographic distribution is helpful to us to make educated guesses about locations of future district events, and help in long-term financial planning.