There’s different kind of tournament and probably you are pertaining to free roll tournaments on poker which I agree to you on this.
My statement is mainly describing on wagering tournament like this one on Yeet that requires huge capital to wager more and get higher spot with higher reward.
Probably the user above is talking about regular poker game.
Those leaderboards where the whales are competing for higher positions in the top ten are definitely unattainable for the low baller players out there, I can only guess the people on that list are millionaires if they are dropping tens of thousands of dollars a month. However that's life, there will always be some who have much more wealth than us and engage with entertainment at a much higher level. It might be nice if some sort of bracket leaderboard was possible, based on your average spend in the previous 1 or 3 months. Have different leaderboard for players in the <1k/1k+/10k+ brackets with appropriate rewards for each, that way the low rollers could feel some love too