You had to qualify in '12 for some tournaments. Mostly tied into rankings and the way '12 did it's tutorial via lower tours.
As far as the difficulty settings in the videos, the ones I have seen were done with heavy EA influence. They have to be somewhat careful; especially with this being the first year of kinect support; of bad/inexperienced players making the game look too hard or glitchy. Plus if the numbers that are given can be trusted, those of us that prefer the more difficult/sim levels are in the vast minority. So any non-EA directed videos might tend to be on lower difficulties because that is how most people play. I know most reviews seem to be based on the lower levels year after year.