I don’t agree with that, @hermannsol.

In the past, I’ve ran contests where the prize was a steembasicincome membership for the winner (1steem) and still got a lot of participants.
Just take a look at the contests run by @peggyhazelwood. She offers half of the generated SBD and has quite a lot of participants.
You just don’t have to aim too high too soon.
Few people will enter a contest for which they have to spend hours to do, just to get half of the payout of the post (unless the payout is a couple hundreds).
But if it’s something that doesn’t take a lot of time to do and is fun, people will play