I am with you to some extent. Often I can win the cup game without having to make too many sacrifices. However, if you are in a tough league you eventually have to make some choices. And in that case, if you want to do what is optimal for your team then bowing out of the cup is the correct option. The gate income and the fan survey benefits are much greater for winning league games than for winning cup games.
mmh for single games i go for cup, sometimes a loss inmake a big difference(top 2 places, or 6 and worser) Sometimes you are happy to fall from three, four or fith place to the sixth ... But in most cases you land on the ame place, and additional cup game also could give you an advantage for the next league game because you maybe can tie in the next round again.
And overall, a third or fourth division team double their income with one of this game, and maybe had to give up a small chanche to win away ... It gives many sitution where it makes sense to go for cup, instead of league.
For us in the first division where the cup bonus, is the difference betwenn visior income with a succesfull or unsuccesful game befor it is small ... But this is also in reality, the cup isn't that attractive for the big team, then for the small. In germany the first league, isn't participating in the cup since this season and the top 6 teams and the team who organize the new cup is now playing a league Cup instead. In many other european countrys there are similiar cup systems, because the cup was unactractive for the top teams.
I'm still missing how winning cup games gets your survey up faster?
i said, that the point go up faster in low divisions because they don't struggle half of the tournament with three balls ;)
he fastest way to get your survey up is to beat your rival in a TV game
which are only 5 games in the season, if i counted right ... In some cases even less - and sometimes also those games are easy or nearly impossible.
Even for a low division team the result is not worth it. Take Canada for example. A division III team might want to crunch a division II team in the 1st or 2nd round to advance further. But they are pretty much screwed the next week, unless they draw a bot.
i saw this costolation often, and often they get the turn ... Even after my crunch this season, i manage to win some games after it - i had to give up one single match because of it.