Guild Wars 2 is paid tournaments in favour of new free tournaments. The entrance fee wasn't massive, working out to around 22¢ per player, but developer ArenaNet says it was more about creating a tier of tournaments for properly competitive players, and matchmaking now serves that function.

As of today's patch, all paid tournaments are gone, replaced by 1-round and 3-round free tournaments. ArenaNet explains:

One of the reasons we initially introduced Paid Tournaments was to create a place for hyper-competitive, highly skilled players to find matches with other players of comparable skill, leaving the Free Tournament system available for more casual competitive play. However, now that we have a ratings and matchmaking system in-place that matches players of similar skill levels, we've decided that the ticket cost barrier-to-entry of Paid Tournaments is no longer necessary.

Any leftover Tournament Tickets you may have can be swapped for treasure chests with the new Ticket Merchant, now found standing near the Tournament Master in the Heart of the Mists. GW2 introduced paid tournaments with the Guild Wars 2 with the Halloween update last year.