I always laugh when I see people try to predict the future of gaming leagues. As CAL/CPL demonstrated, no one can predict when a gaming league will fall or how quickly one can fail.
This is an extremely fluid environment and even when you do everything right, things can still go horribly wrong. MLG seems to have a winning formula, but then again so did others that are no longer around.
Perfect example of how fast good times can become a nightmare are the recent events in EVE Online.