A tee-shirt and coffee-cup with some kind of dogsled design printed on it might be worth the $20 annual membership. The real business is tourism, the kind that actually comes to Anchorage for the festivities and start of the race and then forgets about it. Some also go to Nome for the finish, but real jet-setters are off to Aspen or the Riviera or Dubai by then.
My wife and are were planning to burn some frequent flyer miles and go to Anchorage for the Iditarod but it's blacked out so no trip for us.
Iditarod.com is a great site during the race to follow the mushers as they compete. We decided to forego the Insider because our dial up connection is too slow.