All of this could have been avoided by giving the rewards for position rather than percentage. It is hard to argue over whether a server group is placed 9th or 10th. It is very easy to argue that 'percentages' have been recalculated in some way. Most races have podium prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Most leaderboards then show the top ten and often the final position of all participants. Everyone who finishes the race gets a position. It keeps most people happy.
Unfortunately favouritism doesn't look very different to rigging the event when servers are looking at small details. Instead of making people happy, motivated and willing to work for a good event, this fostered resentment, lack of motivation and a lot of bad feeling. It is not exactly how you should set up an event that was supposed to celebrate all the achievements of Settlers over the last 20 years and encourage people to continue playing and recommend it to their friends, or to encourage new players to join.While I do not and have not believed BB 'rigged the event' so .de would win there certainly have been numerous occurrences of what looks very like favouritism and this has done nothing at all to foster the sense of healthy competition an event like this ought to inspire. Rather it has, in many cases, caused a great deal of bad feeling and much text has been spent in many chats and on many fora taking unwarranted swings at other servers.