S/K are still only on the reserve team for funding, same as I/Z. That stands for the whole season, and then gets re-assessed based on results this season & what the federation considers their potential to be & they could get full national team status (don't have to be on the World/European team for this, M/K have it), stay on the reserve team or be dropped altogether (This is why P/G split & she quit). So I'd guess both new teams are still having to cover some of their training costs. For them to do this shows a commitment to the new partnerships, but if the results don't come and they don't get full funding, maybe it would be another factor in any doubts they might have. Perhaps not making it out of nationals would be good for S/K to be able to go away and work on the basics that they haven't nailed down yet, but it wouldn't do them any favours financially.
As for S/K being favoured, why did they get signifcantly lower PCS than I/Z at CoR if the federation was pushing them? 2 points in the SD and 4 points in the FD, when they had no visible or jarring errors, and higher PCS scores to prop them up wouldn't have been too scandalous. We've seen worse to protect a favourite, like Lipnitskaya's FS score at CoR last year.
To make things even more interesting - Zahorski/Guerrerio scored 62 in their SD at the Russian Cup event today. Scores are usually slightly inflated & she still doesn't have a release from France, but it's still a very strong debut and adds another couple into the competition.