I don't usually chime in on this topic, but I find myself reading Pinside tonight in a hotel room 2500 miles from my home, so what the hell...
Raising the price also eliminates younger or newer, and sometimes novice players, which as an organization really isn't something we want to do. It's a balance though, so some of that already happens and is unavoidable, and we try to compensate in other ways to interest those people affected by these decisions, such as videos, charity, or giveaways. If the scale slides in one direction, we always try to do something that benefits the other side as well. We don't always succeed, but we try.
The prize pool already is large enough to guarantee a level of prestige, both inside and outside of the pinball community. Two years ago, PAPA had the choice of raising the prize pool of our own tournaments but instead chose to add money to the pots of each Circuit event, hoping the larger numbers for those events around the country, primarily run by others, would help bring them additional publicity and more awareness to the game in general, rather than more awareness solely to us. You are correct the next goal money-wise is a round number though... something like $100k, or $1million with sponsorship, because those types of prize pools are easy to remember and advertise, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't discourage the newer, younger type of player (or something has to be created in another area to compensate for that loss if we do go that route of raising prices).
At any rate, we do think about these things, for anyone who wonders. Also, to the fellow who commented on greed, raising the price of the tournament just raises the amount of money we pay out to players. If we were trying to make money, we would raise the cap, lower the price to get more people through the door and profit on coin-drop and merchandise... but that type of thinking doesn't really serve the purpose of why the organization was built. PAPA isn't built as a traditional business, though it is occasionally forced to act like one to help preserve its survival.
Keep flipping.