A mutineer is an outcast
An Italian player withdrew from the World Cyber Games qualifier in 2002. He was one of the favourites to win a medal in Daejeon but he decided that he was not able to fully express his talent on the tournament sponsor's new LCD monitors. So he quit.

Before the qualifier he was a celebrity in his country, sponsors had deals ready for him and media loved him because he spoke more like a poet than a stereotypical nerd. When he threw it away, he became a hero for no more than five people. To others an outcast and an example that it is not worth it.

A single player has no power and is a hostage to a corporation. My way or the highway.

An ATP in esports?
What if the players join together and form something like tennis players did in 1972 with the ATP? First of all, no one is going to do that. It is every man for himself in a world where one day you are a champion and the next day your game is no longer an esport. In a world where your prime spans over two years and you only really earn money if you are the best.

And even if the players come together and protest, the truth is that players need tournament organisers more than the tournament organisers need the players. The CPLs of this world could always choose to support a game whose players cause fewer problems and have a higher level of gratitude. And they can easily justify the choice.

The mutineers would literally be left with nothing. Sponsors will not care if 50 of the best players gather up and say that they have a plan. A video game is a risk, not a cash cow like tennis.

We all want good events
At the same time, it is not like the tournament organisers are hell bent on spoiling the lives of players. The reality is that they are not allmighty themselves. If the ESL could hold the Extreme Masters finals outside of CeBIT, give players enough space and isolate them from the noise, they probably would. If the ESWC could supply gaming grade monitors, they would.

The tournament organisers themselves are hostages to the needs of the sponsors. And even if they manage to create a good enough ecosystem for the game and for the players, they are still in a perennial choke hold.

The publishers of any game could come to any company that runs events for their product and tell them that they can no longer use their game. Thanks to the End User License Agreement they control everything.

A little more conversation, a little less action
All of the above makes it close to impossible to organise any kind of body in esports that would actually manage to influence something. The groups with their respective bits of power, the players, the teams, the event organisers, they do not have enough of it to leverage others into cooperation. Others, like sponsors or game publishers simply do not need that.

The most ludicrous concept in esports are national esports federations. Those have absolutely no power and there is not a single reason why someone should listen to what they have to say. What kind of leverage do they have? If they get it somehow, then everything still ultimately in the hands of a dozen different publishers. How are the federations going to work around that?

Nothing will change until the big ones start needing the little ones more than the other way around. Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

Until then, blackmailing and acting up won't be a real threat. The little ones can only gang up and politely advise the big ones.