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Games of skill are at their best when balanced such that the player's probability of winning is as close as possible to 50% . (I cite no source for this claim, because in the time that passed between me reading the argument leading to this conclusion, and me writing this post, the link I intended to give here has rotted away) Designers of contemporary adversarial multiplayer (PvP) videogames gravitate toward one particular way of tuning the difficulty of a match toward the desired 50% win-rate: skill-based matchmaking, that is, pairing each player with an equally skilled opponent, and have them face off on an even playing field that does not give an "unfair" advantage to either side.
There is another approach to PvP balance: have players of widely varying skill levels play against each other, on an uneven playing field that favors the weaker player to a degree that exactly cancels out the difference in skill. For example, in a game of Go, the weaker player gets to start the match with a number of black stones already placed on the board. I believe that this second way of balancing PvP games is superior, and I wish that more games would support it.
Handicapping in Go (wikipedia)
By removing the constraint that players must closely match each other's skill level in order to have a decently challenging match, the "handicapping" system frees me to consider other criteria when choosing who to play against, such as "do I know this person? are they my friend?". This is huge. I'd much rather play with my friends, than be forced to choose between gaming (with strangers that happen to match my skill level at the time) and spending time with friends.
But even if I didn't have any friends, and cared only for gaming, I'd still prefer a game with a robust "handicapping" system to a game that depends on SBMM, because SBMM is only viable given a fairly large player base. If I'm able to match with any player currently online, and not just the small subset that closely matches my own skill level, then it doesn't take that many players to keep the game alive. I'd hate to invest my time "getting into" a game that's constantly at risk of being pushed into a "death spiral" given a slight dip in popularity.