The subscription model sounds pretty great as a player: pay some fee for each new set (up-front or monthly over the time it's legal in Modern), play with whatever sets you have access to in whichever format they're legal in.
- pay fee for unlimited phantom drafts - pay more fee for full sets (no drafting) - pay most fee for unlimited drafts and full set
It does remove a bit of the gambling/addicting element, but it would get players like me to "support" them more.
And it works out basically how you say. The games are popular and exciting when new, since you can buy all the cards for cheap(er than Magic) and balance / design doesn't have a huge card pool to think about.
Unfortunately once the competitive meta encompasses hundreds of dollars worth of product the dynamic flips on its head. The community is composed almost entirely of people who've "bought in" so the options for casual play are actually much more limited than they are for Magic, and organized play doesn't have the resources to address balance concerns or (more importantly) keep putting in enough events with good enough prizes to keep people involved in the scene.
And this isn't even touching the elephant in the room: the only reason there are spaces (i.e. game stores) in which to play is because Magic keeps the lights on for game stores.
Like you said, that's the elephant in the room. Magic is hugely profitable in its current form. There's no way they change that. They keep doing "known quantity" products like the Commander decks, or the other pre-cons, but we all know those aren't nearly as desirable.
As someone who works for a tabletop gaming company, and knows a little bit about how the sausage is made, you absolutely have to use things like blind boxes/boosters to pay the bills to make more "customer friendly" products that sell at 1/5th the rate.
Also, about the comment in parenthesis: I'm guessing you meant Standard. In that case, it makes sense. If you really meant Modern, I'd find it problematic. Since Modern doesn't rotate (unlike Standard), that would make it an accumulative cost unless you decide to deliberately drop the ability to play with cards which are still legal.