Z. H. Darkstar
Explorer
Pure speculation, of course, but they might be thinking about a model more similar to that of Pathfinder's Society which (IIRC; it's been ages since I last played that) you bought the individual mods for a couple of bucks each and then you could run them as often as you wanted. I don't mind that, as the money for all this has to come from somewhere, but the bar is raised significantly when you start charging people for a product as opposed to just offering it for free.
If so, that and the rating system they have implemented on the DMGuild site may provide some... interesting feedback to Wizards on the quality of some of the stuff out there.
The money for the AL materials already has a source: the D&D Marketing budget. Without a clear view of what this will do for AL play, this simply feels like nickel-and-diming the AL DMs to squeeze blood from a stone.
Don't get me wrong. I've been a huge proponent of having AL adventures being sold to the public. However, the AL DMs do plenty of work on the ground level to further the propagation of the program. We should have unfettered access to the adventures in comparison to John Q. Public.
Part of what made AL so easy to adopt for FLGS is that there were no charges to run it. Changing that is going to cause friction between FLGS and DM over who has to pay for the PDFs. Not to mention, I would expect FLGS to start charging for play sessions in locations that there was previously no sitting fee. Care and consideration need to go into deciding how this affects the FLGS level. Otherwise, it's one step forward and two steps back.