Don't give them too much credit, they're actually just being tight.
I can't think of any other branch of Organized Play that seemingly tries to expand while reducing the budget, lol.
Oh yeah and the fact that the lovely fan-organised Gamerbase tournaments here in the UK have considerably better prizes than the official tournaments is pretty damn terrible.
(Also Black and White have sold over twice as much as Platinum which came out the same relative to 2010, VGC's best year, so yeah)