Does it? I mean yeah it's not that useful for me here in the North East but whilst we're important we're not the majority of Northern customer base. That would be Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield (honourable mentions to Hull, Preston, Bolton, etc). For people in those areas it represent a £35 ticket that's valid across a huge swathe of the North on the primary operator in those areas. Doesn't feel like a niche product when you look at it from that perspective.
The lack of a railcard discount is a shame but certain tickets have always been excluded from Railcards or certain sorts of railcards (for instance a 16-25 and 26-30 cannot discount a 1st Class ALR, Caledonian Sleeper don't accept the 26-30 Railcard, etc etc). That's quite apart from there being many people who aren't entitled to a Railcard at all so this may well still represent a useful ticket to them compared to paying full price. Especially when factoring in the flexibility it offers.
We'll see how it does, these sorts of ticket are always a bit niche lets be real, most passenger don't buy anything other than a point to point ticket (of some form) or perhaps an area based ticket for their local PTE (like West Yorkshire). But to call it a "niche TOC vanity product" feels extremely harsh.
