Its not as if merging two worlds would be starting from scratch.  Im WIS could cut/paste the franchises from world to world.   Instead of having two worlds of 15 teams idle, the one world of 30 could become a more stable world.

It actually doesn't.  The owners with their super teams lose interest when their 100 win team becomes a 78 win team.  Every merged world had a ton of openings in their second season.

  merge again, too many worlds problem gets solved eventually. 

Wow   I hadn't checked this thread I stated for a while.  Glad to see it is generating some discussion with ideas about what to do which was my main reason for starting it.

I still think shutting down 1 world is the way to go.  Is it a perfect solution?  No.  But I don't think there is a perfect solution.  Pick the one with the most openings or the one that has been waiting the longest to fill.  That would meet the requirement of a less desirable world for whatever reasons.  Giving those owners $100 may be a bit high, I think crediting them 2 free seasons is about right.  Are they all going to run out an pick up a new team to replace the one they lost?  No, but a few of them will.

Another thing that would help....If a few owners would actually help out newbies instead of taking advantage of them.  A few more newbies might just stick around for future seasons if that was the case instead of bailing out after 1 season.

Recently, for what seemed like a very long time, ABU and Hunter worlds were unfilled. They could have merged, but they didn't.  I thought they were morons for not merging, and that their worlds would never fill.  They did.

undoubtedly with aliases galore.