I see they closed the O, widened spacing of the gaps in the prongs of the E, opened the gap in the G, closed the space between the L+E (filled it with outline colour instead of background). Did they also narrow the letters a little (flatten horizontally)?

Anything I missed.

I can see what would reduce file size, remove some jaggies on colour boundaries of highly compressed images but it seems more likely to be effective with logoed merchandise (like dye-sub t-shirts, etc.). Is there any good analysis somewhere of what the redesign achieved digitally?

The new logo thickens the yellow border, and removes fine details such as the yellow line between L and E, and the yellow line within the O.

I think in the print world you can assume decent quality like 300 DPI. Whereas the new logo, with its thickening or removal of fine details, is more friendly toward low-resolution computer displays. Look at what happens when those two logos are resized to 60×60 pixels, for example.