Bob is right. I should also ad that this policy has always been the same (ie we didn't change it since the break up to be "elitist").
Membership does have benefits, and this website has costs. I should also ad that our unique visits and page impressions STILL (even post break up) are multiples of both SRT and "other" Viper sites, combined.
This year, while down ~10% or so in some metrics from last, we run over a million page views, 60k+ unique visits a month, along with over 130k visits per month.
So there is a distinct benefit to advertising (or membership). We are open to change and suggestions of course, but this is actually the first time this has come up.