you're still presuming that everyone will find the money to do all those probables and "oh yeah we'd do it" statements.
i think you're a bit confused with what the teams have said in the past about what they'd commit to. in single seaters for example, teams express their intentions to compete in a series to signal their availability to drivers who might want to compete in something that the team doesn't. very rarely does the team actually get round to competing. you can have 50 team bosses at a new series launch and 12 who bother buying cars.
why would they open up elms which is working brilliantly as a pro-amateur type series to teams with more money than sense for the sake of a couple of speculative cars? that's what wec is for. they've just opened up the lower end of the field again to lmp3 which clearly shows you the kind of market they're aiming for.
you're right though, the success of lmp2 in elms isn't based on it being a headliner, but if it gets relegated for the sake of a tiny field it won't exactly be good for it. but then the more i think about it, the more i suspect it's probably still a decent advantage of elms over wec - at least if you're at the front of the lmp2 class in elms you get the headline press about it. you're on the overall podium, not the class one.
nope, sorry, definitely disagreeing with you on that front! in case you hadn't noticed
fwiw though there's definitely a decent media presence at elms. it's often a significant local interest though.