I actually don't understand the issue or problem with having more players playing in the diamond league tournaments myself. Most people with non-competitive decks will play once or twice and not play again anyway, as they will quickly realise that they have no shot of winning. Fee or no fee. I myself don't play them often, and there is no way I will pay a fee to even try - I know I would just be handing money over to the best players, who I know I can't consistently beat atm. If you think you have no shot of winning a tournament then it really is a waste of time and money for those people and not the top tier players. They will get paid to beat the weaker players anyway, so whats the big deal? And the best players would actually want the weak players in the field, as that's where the value actually comes from. You may get unlucky once or twice in the short term, but in the long run you are printing money against those players.

One of the biggest talking points amongst the SM community has always been to expand the player base as much as possible. That's a good idea for obvious reasons. But if players need to purchase cards to play the game and then have to also pay fees while losing consistently, they are more likely to get disheartened and give up, than if they didn't have to pay fees just for the privelege to enter a tournament.

The issue with paying a fee, comes from the fact that the prizepools were supposed to be generated from pack sales and the SM community account, and there was never a mention of fees being introduced into the game. This is why so many of us aren't buying the argument being given in favour of fees for tournaments (aside from the spam issue).

The reason why I made the second point you highlighted, is because there is a disconnect between the reason given for fees to be introduced (wasting peoples time) and the very likely reality that there will be much larger field sizes in diamond level tournaments in future anyway when more and more players level up. What happens when the game grows to the point of having 10,000 players all levelled up to diamond level playing tournaments? Will everyone be wasting their time then? So, to me that just doesnt make sense, because that is whole point.....To have more people playing a the highest possible level rather than less, which also creates the opportunity for more traffic and much bigger prize pools!

Thanks so much for giving us your time @glory7!