Battle Cup suggestions/improvements

Hello. I just wanted to give my input on how Valve can improve/fix Battle Cup to make it enjoyable again.

Would be nice as well to get your ideas/opinions on this.

Battle Cup channel
Since last year around October(?) players are no longer able to join the Battle Cup channel. It now says "Sorry, there are not enough players in this division/tier". Either Valve disabled this to reduce the amount of random people playing and to give them an excuse to remove Battle Cup down the road OR this is a genuine bug (although it's hard to imagine that Valve would leave a PAID feature for this long without fixing it.)

Battle Smurfs

I think over time the incentive to play at your own Battle Cup tier has become less due to the reward.

I understand that we'll never get rid of ALL smurfs, but I do believe having more requirements set in place will help tone it down a bit.

These requirements I suggest are:-

Calibrated medal. If you don't have a medal in ranked, why are you playing a paid competitive tournament? Would be nice as well if medals reset if you haven't played ranked in a few months.
Trophy level needs to be higher for those without Dota Plus. I've seen so many level 20 accounts playing in Battle Cup who have been gifted a ticket by a friend. If they have Dota Plus, then level 20 accounts can join since Valve is making money from it.
If its possible to add a algorithm like Ranked where it can detect smurfs and ban them that would help as well. If not, at least allow us to REPORT smurfs in Battle Cup because I don't think it's an option right now.

Battle Cup Improvements