Chinajohn:UEL is a minute niche market that only a very few people are interested in, (and I'm not one of them).
John, I'm sorry you haven't yet discovered the joys of UEL. I hope you will some day.
I must correct you on your comment that it's a minute niche market.
Every since the UEL community got the token free weekly back in December, I've run unofficial Tour standings based on the scores. Looking at the player lists from those, limited to just the TL and L tier, it's clear that this is not a minute niche any more. 613 unique TLs and Ls shot scores of par or better (or won credits) in those tourneys between Dec-Mar, and 418 have played the last 6 weeks. And this doesn't include any of the players who shot higher than par, or any TM, M, TP, P, A or Hack players. So I suspect we're actually talking about many thousands of players who are regularly tackling UEL. Edit: It should also be mentioned that these are the free tourneys, with low prizes, so these numbers don't include many players who would otherwise play them if they had a better chance of recovering ball costs.
As Cerino said, nobody is advocating for the reduction of flat-lie options. All we've ever asked for is some level of equivalency. Currently, the UEL community has one free tourney a week (compared to the two, sometimes three, x 9-hole, one x 18-hole, and one x multi-round free flat-lie events every week), and one free monthly event (compared to at least one 9-hole, one 18-hole, and at least two course-specific monthly opens on the flats)
And, of course, there's now a year-long Virtual Tour, none of which involves UEL, nor is there an equivalent.
In premium events, there's no equivalent of the weekly multi-round, nor of the tier-specific monthly multi-rounder, nor of the tier-specific Monthly Open.
And, there are no UEL Brackets either.
In the RGs, a lot of lobbying has led to the introduction of what is now just six UEL RGs (less than a quarter of the 25 EDIT: four UEL RGs (two are holdovers from the prior set; i.e. less than a fifth of the 23 that are on offer as of now are UEL; btw: Icon has told there is no limit on the number they can create at once, it's just about trying to keep that menu manageable). As long as they are clearly labelled, there really is no reason any flat-lie enthusiast should be worried about their presence.
I'm actually in favor of yet more variety; IMO it's time we had some of those equipment-restricted events that were experimented with back last fall.