I get it. It’s easy. Think of the quasi-scam, where there’s a “contest”, entrants pay a fee, the winner gets a prize. The organizers profit from the fees minus the cost of the prize.

With the power-law of popularity, here there’s going to be a few big winners who collect some prize money, and a *lot* of hopeful fee-payers who are dreaming of being a prizewinner. Which will of course be hailed as democratic community citizen participation. The People Formerly Known As The Audience, now known as The Suckers.

Heck, in realpolitik terms, it’s a decent business model, it doesn’t rely on advertising. It’s a gambling/lottery type of business (with a little skill aspect so it’s not purely gambling/lottery, but I mean the system where everyone pays a fixed charge, a few big payouts are the incentive, and the house skims a percentage as the take).