In the age of Covid, I think TOC is actually relatively accessible for most of the country (or anyone with internet and a laptop, at least). A large large majority of the points that allowed my partner and I to qualify for TOC this year were from online tournaments that most people could enter (in fact, tournaments that have extremely high entry fees, like Stanford, do not give NPDL points).

I do think that much of kritical debate is concentrated on the West Coast, though.