Digital Sports Commentary Rights?

There wasn't a lot of activity for this week's Tech Tree so I figured I'd post something else.

Last month, StarCraft II was a triple threat on my empty wallet that held little interest for me.  More recently, I've become addicted to the match commentaries.

I've never really cared about sports of any kind before.  I've enjoyed the idea of videogame leagues and hoped that they would reach a mainstream audience.  I just never went out of my way to keep updated.

YouTube, however, is a site I visit daily.  Lone gamers uploading videos are doing a better job of reaching me.  I'm not alone.  Commentators such as HuskyStarcraft currently have over 12 million views and 45 thousand subscribers.  Videos from the HDH Invitational (co-hosted with HDstarcraft) are anxiously awaited.

Unfortunately, the fact that Husky has multiple "Most Viewed" awards didn't stop YouTube from instantly rejecting his partnership.  I'm clueless as to how many other commentators have tried.  YouTube itself probably rejects many applications a day from all sorts of channels and is keeping silent.  The prevailing theory is that commentators simply don't have the right to make a profit off of game actions.

The most solid, non-legalese, document being referenced appears to be Blizzard's Letter to the Machinimators of the world.  I'm not a lawyer, but the parts that stick out the most to me are the sections that rule out any form of compensation and place limitations on sponsor promotion. 

YouTube makes money from advertising and video creators likely don't have a fine amount of control over what appears or for how long.  Blizzard can be contacted, but I doubt it's worth their while to sort out every wannabe with a microphone.

I'd rather see the issue dealt with in bulk.  I share the opinion expressed in this beta thread that replays are not machinima and would benefit from a separate license.  While machinima may entertain viewers with non-cannon or completely unrelated tales, replays display the game as the original creators intended.  Machinima is an advertisement for storytellers who happen to use a game's engine.  Replays are an advertisement for the game itself.

While my interest in Rockin' Android's localization of Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the 7 Devils comes solely from watching NakaTeleeli, I'm not necessarily saying that every video of somebody playing a game should be allowed to profit.  Narrative-based games in particular would probably suffer due to spoilers.

Instead, I'm wondering whether digital sports, with their unscripted actions governed by players, would benefit if restrictions were loosened.  Before income can be made off of sports fans, it helps to indoctrinate them with commentators who can explain what the frell is going on and make them care. 

If you're the lone supplier of sports equipment, motivating those commentators with money from someone else's pocket doesn't strike me as a negative.