The first-found ticket can unlock any content that is specified in the tickets, but you need the fake ticket present in order for the unpurchased content to be enabled initially, and it must be present when you execute. In your scenario, you didn't run the install with the fake ticket, so that ticket never made it into /storage_slc/rights/ticket/apps. You'll only have what you bought, because none of the other flags are set.
To run Smash, where you own a single DLC, without sigpatches:
- Download the DLC and fake ticket.
- Run your sigpatcher.
- Use tik2sd to backup your tickets.
- Use WupInstaller to install the DLC title with the fake ticket.
- Run Smash and see the new content (press + after the first one to skip the rest).
- Exit Smash.
- In sd:/tik2sd/keys.txt, find the ticket location for Smash's DLC title (0005000c10144f00).
- Transfer that ticket bucket file from the SLC ticket dir, i.e. /storage_slc/rights/ticket/apps/0002/00000012.tik, to your PC.
- Hex edit the file and ensure that you see (at least) both the legit and fake tickets for 0005000c10144f00. If not, add whichever ticket is missing.
- Ensure that the legit ticket comes earlier in the file than the fake one. If you don't do this, you'll get the DLC corrupt message when you're not sigpatched.
- Transfer the file back if you made any changes.
Reboot without sigpatches and run the game. As long as both tickets are present, you'll have the content. If you want to entertain yourself, take the fake ticket out, and observe that the content goes away the next time you run the game.
Notes:
If you're not able to install the DLC due to a ticket problem, remove the legitimate ticket from the bucket .tik file and try the install again. I prefer to preload my tickets so I don't have to try and figure out which one the WiiU is actually using. I didn't follow exactly what I listed above, but the above steps would be more familiar than preloading.
I do the transfers with WinSCP while ftpiiu_everywhere is running on the WiiU. If you set up a custom editor in WinSCP that calls HxD, you can do the download/edit/upload in one step. WinSCP uploads the changed file when it sees a new time stamp.
Give it a shot and let us know how it goes.