Thanks for the replies luckyblind.
You said you were surprised at the low numbers playing cash during a DTD tournament and add that a DTD reg confirmed cash games were adversely affected by this measure. I wonder then why ANY cash game player would have voted in favour of the re-entry format??
Don't forget cash game players are an integral part of the customer base in a card room business. Obv any cash players looking to get juicy side games going are going to be disappointed because that £500 or whatever is going back into the comp rather than finding it's way to the cash tables. Thus rather than canvass opinion from tourney players who have busted why not go and ask cash game players looking to get a game started what they think and I'm sure you'll get a markedly different result.
You have said re-entry adversely affects revenue for the venue, adversely affects cash games for the players, and as you can see lots of the players polled don't want it, yet you are very convinced it's a winning idea. The only argument you present in favour is because some players have travel costs to meet.
I think you have missed the bit where I said "certain situations".
For an event where a lot of the field are travelling and in particular staying in a hotel then from an organisers point of view you want as many in a tournament as possible. At some point a lot of the players will end up in a cash game. In my experience (which is only 8 years of running major festivals) players are most likely to book a new flight home when exiting early on Day 1 after that they usually (not always) stay.
Where an event is populated by players who are going home each night the longer they play in the tournament the less likely they would be to end up in a cash game (IMO).
Without doing the math (and I am not likely too as it does not match our business) I would imagine at some point the extra numbers added by offering re-entries in a locals-centric tournament the cash game revenue could go up. F&B will certainly go up.
From a tournament players point of view I can't see a reason not to want re-entries if you are correctly rolled for the buy in level. Even then if you are playing out of your roll's level I still don't see a valid objection. Romantic reasons are not valid - again IMO.
I would imagine all "predominantly cash game" players would vote for no re-entries. There are more relevant questions that I would be asking cash game players than those about tournaments.
This is all just my opinion as I presumed this is what this thread asked for.