A sort of roundabout answer to bjr 93tz's question about who benefits from more participants...
More participants mean it will be easier to stage a successful local contest. This year, other than the contest sponsored by my own club, the closest contest I'll go to is a 4 1/2 hour drive, with two night hotel stays at all of them. That's expensive. If every club within an hour of me had a few pattern pilots there could be several contests close enough to drive home between days.
More participants, more contests, less expense, more participants...

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that every club will have active pattern flyers but there certainly could be more.