Despite this being a new section it is still Smogon so the annoying aspects of deciding on slots are unfortunately quite present. As a disclaimer, I'm only speaking for myself and not on behalf of the mod team or leadership. An important thing that has been discussed so far is 'who is this tournament for and what is it supposed to be?' That isn't something that has a formal answer at the moment and if you ask a dozen people you'll get a dozen different answers. The answer to that question is going to heavily influence what one deems to be an appropriate number of slots and tiers.
Personally, ChampionsPL should be a more casual tour that showcases the varied metagames under the champions umbrella with a focus on inclusion and should attempt to attract players from outside the community. This is already the ethos of the section to some extent as links to both VGC and BSS can be found here and on the discord server. There has been a lot of frustrating tierbashing to read through in this thread and the discord server and I don't think that some of y'all trying to be 'rational and objective' realize that if we followed this logic then this tournament would primarily focus on VGC, BSS, and Draft with Champions OU being relegated to the minimum number of slots to avoid headaches due to the disparity in the size of the playerbase and development of the metagame.
The biggest concern I have for the tournament at the moment isn't really the tiers, but the managers. Regardless what the slots and tiers settle into there is not currently much of an overlap in playerbase and having enough managers sign up that are able to properly support their players is a concern of mine. Some people have brought up the raw number of signups, but I don't think this will be a significant issue. The tournament will have a CA prize and there are enough generally solid players that will sign up solely for that and will likely pad the numbers to where they need to be.
Tiers
Champions OU - This is the flagship tier so obviously it will be in. The question is how many slots should it get. At least two is a given, three seems fine, but above that seems pretty questionable from what I've seen.
Champions UU - Yes the tier is small and does not currently have much in the way of development. I also don't see that as a significant issue at least for this tournament. Tournaments accelerate that process and Champions UU gives me similar vibes to NDUU. A small, but dedicated playerbase that easily justifies a slot in most tournaments and is more of a tournament tier than anything. If you're against Champions UU being included, at least give them some benchmark to reach for you to consider including the tier. I'm not sure if the current state of the resources is up to par, but that is something that can easily be addressed by the council before the tour starts.
VGC - Pretty easy to justify multiple slots imo. I'm really not involved in VGC to any meaningful degree so if
RauSakura would mind weighing in that would be great. Is there enough community interest at the moment?
BSS - It is pretty hard to argue against one slot. There are arguments for and against a second that I'm pretty neutral on. Regardless of what happens a second BSS slot is likely to be competing with a different tier fighting for their only slot. A second BSS slot seems justifiable, but I'm also not really in tune with BSS on Smogon specifically so can't really give much input on that.
Draft - I'm honestly not sure if there is an area on Smogon that has an equivalent Draft format that you can reasonably argue for excluding Draft. Even relatively meaningless Draft tournaments tend to have more signups than the section's flagship tour. As far as I'm aware, Draft has been very well received as a slot in every tournament they've been featured and that is increasing as time goes on. A lot of people sign up just for that slot despite the lack of the traditional mid-tour draft week which is likely annoying for Draft players. The logistics are easy for managers and hosts and at this point Draft probably should be included by default in just about every Smogon tournament where it is feasible. For reference, the Champions Draft Kickoff tour had 330+ signups. One can easily argue for multiple Draft slots, but that is pretty context dependent and I'd rather give UU a chance than a second Draft slot if it came down to it.
Doubles - This exists...
eragon Schister not sure if you two are aware of this. In my experience Doubles OU folks play just about any tournament where Doubles OU is featured and always provide a good slot. Having Doubles OU + VGC in the same tour seems like a neat opportunity, but I don't know enough about the metagame or its state of development to comment.
tl;dr - Include the maximum number of slots that signups can sustain while maintaining a baseline of competitiveness. It is fine if things are not perfect in the first edition of the tour and giving some folks the opportunity to enjoy and showcase their tiers should be prioritized. The CA will attract enough people that sign up for tours purely to get one
