Don't think competitive TFT will ever become popular...

I haven't played TFT for 2-3 seasons, and watching this TFT tournament didn't really keep me looped in enough. Can say I'm pretty confident in understanding fundamental rules by playing since original Dota2 autochess into set 1 - 8 as plat/diamond, but wasn't enough to keep watching this TFT tournament. Main two reasons for me:

1. Too many changes between sets for casual viewers to remain tuned in. I haven't played League of Legends regularly either, but I can jump into any league stream or tournament and still understand what's going on. Not at all for TFT. If you think of the hundreds of thousands of people that have "played" LoL and can still tune into a league stream/tourney, LoL doesn't exclude all those casuals like TFT does and I think that's why it's maintained its high viewership.
2. Augments. Again, another large amount of information that casual viewers may not be aware of. But the fact that augments are just shown as icons (whereas origins/traits at least show name and # of synergy), really isn't enough information for casual viewership.

I thought the only fun part I watched was when 3*star units were hit and they were rolling down and hit it. Otherwise was probably the most boring stream I've watched. I think developers have made the game more fun for players (all these new augments, portals, etc), but for viewership it's still really niche. The more and more complex they make TFT, and the fact they're going to make 2-3 new TFT seasons every year now, it's going in the wrong direction for including more viewership...