OP

Quoted from dyopp21:

I'm a relatively new tournament director (we opened our location in Feb of this year) but I can say that the addition of IFPA sanctioning in our tournaments for our little place has been a pretty big boon for participation. Having been a former dart competitor, I built our arcade around the spirit of competition with gallery monitors on 90% of the machines (and adding more as I can afford) and weekly tournaments. In the beginning I only did "fun" tournaments and we would average 8-10 people. A couple months ago I changed that to a weekly Friday night IFPA sanctioned tournament and I've watched our participation swell to more than double those original numbers since doing so. In addition we've had players driving up to 4 hours just to participate. Last Friday night we had 23 players and as the race to the end of the year picks up steam (we are hosting the first ever SCS for the state of Tennessee in Jan) I suspect we'll continue to see similar numbers and possibly even more.
Last Friday at our "Friday Night Fights" tournament.

I had heard about the additional fees but hadn't given them a lot of thought until now, actually. If the draw of IFPA points continues to bring in top level players in their current numbers, I suppose I don't mind the extra fee, although I think a one-time registration fee would have been easier logistically speaking. For what it's worth.
Yopp