you will end up with twitch accounts and teams made by everyone that will have ONLY them in it, they wont be active and ittl be like guilds or clans in every game EVER. i think keeping it to partner only is a bit more organized and it makes being on a team feel just a bit more like a kinda "hidden achievement" for streamers to get. find a partner join a team.

I completely agree with this - seems strange that this is a partner only feature. This would be a great way for smaller streamers to band together with a unique selling point, rather than having a bunch of hodge-podge teams just full of random people.

Additionally, opening this up would give a lot more weight to any other features that could be considered for Teams. It would build on Twitch's social and networking tools and could even be used to aid in discovery and searching.

For real! I run a Discord server we are trying to turn into a gaming brand and we only have Affiliates, no Partners, but would like the option to promote the team/brand as a Twitch Team.

I have a lot of friends who are all affiliates and I'd love to be able to help each other grow by forming a team on twitch together but currently it's only available for partners.
Would really like to be able to do this as it would likely help discovery for smaller streamers