As long as the two rides don't intersect, it might turn out to be a great thing.
Say one goes north, the other south. Now if you've got, say, 15,000 people who want to ride across Iowa one week, half of them can ride each ride. OK, it'll probably end up being more like 10,000/5,000 the first year, since there's going to be trememdous inertia connected with the RAGBRAI name. My point is, since there's too many people trying to ride RAGBRAI, and many end up pirating the event, why not split the ride into two? It even makes sense to have both rides the same week. Prospective riders have to choose which ride they want to do, instead of having large numbers trying to ride both (and filling up all the slots before other, later registering, prospective riders can get in).
It'll be interesting to see how DMR can handle the ride with all the people who knew what they were doing leaving the organization. I'd tend to go with the experienced people, instead of the fancy name, if I were to pick one to ride next summer.