I wonder how people reacted to the team event in gymnastics when it was just getting started. It's been around now for about 20 Olympic cycles with the vast majority of medals going to the same handful of countries. Yet somehow it keeps going.
I think it depends on the history of it. If the team event always had the same format in all competitions, not just Olympics, then it definitely holds more legitimacy. We have two team events - WTT and this team event, both totally different, one more arbitrary than the other.