The competition isn't going away, Sky will see to that. They have too much power regarding English cricket thanks to the old regime effectively handcuffing us to them through TV deals and Sky are as desperate for it to succeed as they were, putting every inch of their resources into the comp.
The problem is that its inadvertently killing the ECB financially, who are losing around £30m every year the competition takes place in its current guise due to the 9m costs and 23m paid to the counties every year for their compliance. Add that to the fact that the ECB very soon need to find a load of cash very soon to start paying England players enough money to avoid a full-time franchise life and it's a big financial problem for them.
Gut feeling is that they'll keep the competition as it is (maybe change it to 20 overs), possibly add another two/three teams to cover the whole country, then sell them all off to private investors, palming off all the player wage costs to them. They'll then bung all the remaining non hosting counties an extra wad of cash per year to shut them up and cover the growing financial gap between hosting and non hosting counties.
I feel sorry for Gould and Thompson, they really have been left up s**t creek by the old regime.
