I don't know how it is in the rest of the country, but around here, the sheer number of Games is also a factor. There used to be just a few in our state, spread out over the year. Now there are NINE of them in North Carolina alone (with a tenth scheduled to start in 2009). That's not even considering the Games and festivals in bordering states. I figure from where I am in western NC, there are probably more than twenty such events that I can get to within what I consider to be a reasonable drive from here.

Now, on the face of it, this may sound like a very good situation to be in. However, one result of having such a high number of Games around here is that the attendance at any one of these Games individually tends to suffer. Most people don't attend every one of them they can get to. They may attend a few specific ones per year, and they are going to pick and choose those carefully. Now, with the added cost of travel, people are being even more careful about which Games they go to, and how far they have to travel to get there.

So it's not that they are not going. They are just not going to as many as they could.