Quoted from sandersj:

So I finally payed a little attention to this and I have a minor philosophical concern. But let me be objective, competitive pinball is still fun in my town as it's new. We don't do it for money, we play pinball for fun. IFPA points are this magical cool thing that just comes from nowhere and only a few locals are serious about it. I think that what IFPA does is awesome and it can't be done for free and if we charged $1 per tournament entry, or $5/year for membership (insert any number) just to maintain IFPA I'd be deliriously happy with that. But in the IFPA analysis on their site where they state that this is to raise money for prize pools for the very few that can make it to major competitions to compete for big bucks....... I'm not good with that. Its not good for pinball as we are still in the "need to recruit the masses" mode. The fact that the impact analysis had many states where no one was playing IFPA is significant. I'd be totally cool with registration fees etc... but charging fees so the big tournaments can have big cash prizes..... well I can possibly understand that from the perspective from someone living in Chicago, Pennsylvania, or maybe Oregon but those of us out in the wastelands just trying to develop a local pinball culture are still having fun with pinball. This by no means kills the fun, but saying that part of your entry fee goes to support a prize pool that you'll never see is something that I'm not sure people in my local pinball gang is ready to accept and be happy with.
Be advised, I'm the operator of a Stern Army location and I run monthly IFPA events and I'm dealing with nothing but complaints from my locals (i.e. the only people I care about) about how non-fun the IFPA match play events are because all these out of town people show up, slam the machines around, bitch about the tight tilts, bitch about this, bitch about that, break rules then quote rules from some obscure league across the country, bitch bitch bitch, and I let them play for free just to help pinball. I only host them so people can get points, if it's not fun I'm not doing it. Basically, its not fun.
Let me translate that last paragraph. My location is likely cancelling a lot of scheduled IFPA match play events. However, I support a fee to be a member of IFPA. They are providing a service and they should be compensated for it.