So what are the fighting game tournaments like at GenCon?

I checked the highprogrammer site, and it looks like the Street Fighter V and Injustice 2 tourneys at GenCon 2017 only had 16 slots. Is that typical? Seems kind of small to me.

I cannot really speak much to those games (or any of the video games for that matter), but my son joins the Smash Bros Melee and other Nintendo fighting games every year and they have LOTS of slots and LOTS of folks joining them from what I have seen and witnessed. The video game room(s) is a series of suites that are constantly in darkness and constantly full of folks looking to fight and battle with control pads instead of dice.

I saw a League of Legends tournament going as well.

It would be nice to invite some famous players and have some speed runs and other games like you see at PAX South or other primarily video game conventions, but the folks that run that room do a good job of it.

That's typical if I remember correctly. I thought SF5 and things like that have multiple qualifying rounds 
 

let’s get some meltyblood money matches going in someone’s sketchy la quinta room!