The agreement only covers 10 years of funding (not even a blip on the cosmic time scale), but it could do much to advance science even if ET doesn't phone home.  It'll help scientists around the world investigate whole galaxies, rather than small groups of stars.  Much of the data will also be public, so any budding astronomer could put the resulting information to use.  Think of Breakthrough Listen as raising the bar for all searches, not just a fortunate few. 

[Image credit: Lynette Cook, NASA]