firstly who is they and when was this case.
"They" = Twitch and Asked by Developers. Read below.
Don't you need to have a certain number of followers for them to do this?
If you're getting your partnership by yourself, yes, you need to have something like 150+ regular viewers and a shit tonne of followers. My comment comes from my experiences in PlanetSide 2 where people with <50 regular viewers were granted Twitch partnerships at the behest of SOE.
Point being, that if a Publisher/Studio has a good relationship with Twitch(Eg. Putting the Twitch API and inbuilt Twitch streaming in your game á la CoH2 Menu Screen) they tend to be pretty lenient with the criteria required, should they be asked by the game devs to grant a partnership.
Though of course I've no clue how things work with Relic/SEGA and Twitch.
We're definitely open to suggestions.
If you're serious about it, then you need to(imo);
Have observer mode
Revamp replays so they do not function like simulations, so they can be rewinded and work in later patch versions
Make the Twitch part of the menu slightly larger and filterable. So it can be randomized or filtered by most views for example.
Implement at StarCraft II style Ladder with Leagues
The key thing here is Observer Mode. If you want tournaments to matter at all in the long run, it is not an option or a luxury, it is an
absolute necessity. Past tournaments, it servers a number of other functions(Casual players observing each other, mentoring programs to help new people learn, etc.).