I did a post on my blog about the switch to SPS from Collection Power and I feel like it is a good thing even though I don't have much SPS.
I think it was a bad call to label that table column heading "SPSP Req." because it led to confusion since they are replacing Power with SPS staking and you had to have Power to get into the higher league. In this case you don't have to have SPS to get into the higher league your rewards are going to be lower than a baseline.
We need SPS to be higher that would bring more people just like you mentioned though outside guilds via NFTY, etc.