I am a part of the staff that run the tournament.
When you have teams that pre register there are many discounts depending on how many teams there are. Add to the fact that you get to see some amazing International players and it's typically worth the money it costs.
There are many things going on for this tournament, there's 20K in prize money, and it's the largest tournament in the world. We get a lot of school teams so that does help teams a lot to travel and compete. Also there are a maximum of 5 players allowed per team so split between them a weekend can cost $200.00-$300.00 which is no different than any other weekend tournament I play in that's 4 stars.
The less people on your team the more it costs true, but there are far more options available if you think about it logically.
I really don't enjoy hearing from you Der Echte what table tennis is like in the U.S. we've grown quite a lot compared to what you remember. I agree it's not near where it should be considering how large our rec market is, but there's plenty of TT around for the majority of people that want to play.
The weekend was a huge success and I just got back from breaking down the tournament but honestly you should really consider coming next year because that's a new venue that's even better than any before. Add on top of all of this that we were offering a $300 discount per team this weekend and at Nationals in Las Vegas we are offering a $200 discount still, I would imagine nows the best time to be registering for next year's tournaments.
