its a point that comes up from time to time, I get that its maybe not super fair to the more established forum users however, we generally promote these comps to all our customers, many of whom are not active on any forums so we do tend to see the forums we work with go up in terms of numbers when we join up with them.
Of course not all stick around but some do so its good for all involved.
i see some members on some of the forums that we work with joining up to enter a comp as a new user then a few years later they are amongst the most active users so there is added benefit too
however on this one for example there are only 70 comments, some double posts, some chat so the chances of winning are still very high when you consider it that way 