I hope Lego can find a partner more focused on the robotics and not the pageantry and performance.
Culture propagates from the top.
FTC in comparison has been way more fulfilling for my children and I am hoping the next version of FLL is a lighter version of something similar.
I saw it with computer science education as a whole during my schooling. Instead of focusing on fundamentals there was more and more layers of abstraction added, lying to you about what you were actually learning.
There is also another competitive event that will be affected by this: RoboCup Junior.
Earlier this year, FIRST and LEGO announced that FIRST LEGO League would split into two editions--Founders Edition and Future Edition. Both editions would run concurrently for the next two seasons. Founders Edition would continue the current autonomous format and teams could use any of the previous robot kits (RCX, NXT, EV3, SPIKE). Future Edition would be a new remote control format using the new robot kit. After the two transition seasons, Founders Edition would be discontinued and Future Edition would become the one and only format and ending the use of all previous robot kits.
Now that LEGO has announced they are ending their relationship with FIRST after next season, a lot of that is up in the air. Next season will proceed as previously announced, with both Founders Edition and Future Edition. After that, both FIRST and LEGO are each continuing on with their own, separate K-8 robotics programs.
Future Edition requires teams have two of the $530 Computer Science and AI kits. One for their robot and one for the interactive mission models. That's a huge investment for a lot of teams.
LEGO has said they will support SPIKE through the next three seasons but they have not said how that will work or if older robot kits (RCX, NTX, EV3) will also be supported.
FIRST has not announced anything about how their program will work after next season.
Schools may have Lego kits, but there’s not a lot of stuff that would be carried over from season to season.(1)
I think the roughest part of the transition will be the software, but that has always been a relatively small part of the whole FLL “game”.
(1) Massive exception for schools that are all-in on a Lego+FLL program, but I think that is a tiny minority.