Unfortunately more and more competitions are not letting you exhibition, or if they do allow you to do so, they charge you exactly the same price as competing.
I also question if having a division of 10 plus teams for example where in reality only the top three have a true chance to win, is truly a competitive division of 20 teams. IMO it is a competitive division of 3 with 7 or more teams just there to make it look good. Just because you have a large number of teams doesn't automatically mean every team has a truly competitive chance at winning. I mean a few years ago we could of went Large Coed, got a bid and went to Worlds and got slaughtered. We had the amount of kids that year with enough core level 5 skills to make that team but no where was competitive with anyone in that division. Some gyms would of run the team anyway, because they would of been a big deal locally and potentially got a full paid bid just based on numbers of bids available. We couldn't do that and cut down to small coed where we had at least a better chance of looking like we belonged in the division.
I am not one for thinking you must win every competition. Far from it. I also don't think you drop $10,00.00 of your clients money to go to a competition knowing you are going to pick up your last place medal either. You need to be able to pick your battles. That is way harder now that one EP owns most of the other EP's. When raw scores for the top teams are above 96 and you are pushing to get a 93, that tells me that even if you hit and they miss, they would have to drop every stunt and part of a pyramid to even have a chance. And even then they will still be judged as better because they were more difficult than you. So I think there is nothing wrong in gyms finding competitions where they can at least feel competitive without risking athlete safety or jumping progressions to do so. Not winning but competitive. That is the key word.
I think it could be done without these new divisions, even though they do meet the needs of many small gyms. But we have already seen over the ears the reluctance of the industry to change things like unlimited crossovers, teams dropping two and three levels, recruiting etc. that truly hurt what small gyms can put together. Really all they needed to do was enforce these rules and have a Non Worlds division and D2 wouldn't even be necessary. But to do that would mean they would of financially undermined the plan of driving all teams/gyms to Worlds and now Summit which in the past they have shown no inclination of wanting to do that. There is way more money made in chasing that dream than in what is made at those events themselves.