The impact on competitive gaming is affected dramatically along with LAN events are no different then playing online other then 10 players are in the same room.

Further detail here.
http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=30993

YES THE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND IT COSTS MONEY TO DO THIS. Limit the servers to competitive matches then. There is no reason everyone must suffer just to save a few dollars during beta. You have a system with the tickets for the tourney events in game. Using that current system could just flag the games to load a alternate config to adjust the update/cmd/rate/ticrate for those specific games.