OK, I'm a total dork so I decided to try to calculate how many step 1 players they will need to get a winner. Firstly, my wife is asleep in the bedroom where my calculator is, so I did all this on paper so it's probably wrong. Secondly, I used the info in this thread so I assumed that step 10 would have 1 winner, but steps 1-9 would each have 2 winners. Also, remember that this will not be the total number of people who pay a dime as many will "win" tickets to previous rounds if they finish high, but not first or second. I also assumed 10-man tables for easy calculating sans calculator.
So, for step 10 you need 10 players. For step nine, 5 tables with 2 winners each means you need 50 players. I continued to work backwards from here and arrived at the number 3,903,125 Step 1 players will have to participate to fill that final step 10 table. This is probably incorrect, anyone got the right answer?