The idea has been, presumably, to acquire much more TV licensing money from outside Europe, where people are not so much interested in the smaller "local" clubs; so they would pay more for seeing high-profile clubs against each other all the time.

In comparison: in current leagues, each team plays each other team twice per year. If you have only 2-3 internationally known top clubs (like in the German Bundesliga), that adds up to 2 to 8 "top games" in a season.

Also, these top clubs in the ESL would distribute all that additional money among themselves instead of sharing it with the smaller ones.