There is actual proof on how many Smash tournaments are in a year.Are you talking over the course of the year? I really do think SF has more money it. Our "nationals" which are what like 400 once a year. Sf has over 8 tournies a year with 250+ not to mention more weekly tournys since they have them in the weekdays also.
Between June 2008-June 2009 there were at least 681 tournaments worldwide- 25,269 total entrants (this doubles/triple/etc counts people, as in two tournaments in Maryland that have 40 people would could as 80 entrants, even though there may only be 45 unique people)
Between October 2009-August 2010 there were at least 414 tournaments in only the US/Canada with 4,320 unique entrants
You can't find any info like I just mentioned over at SRK, so comparing stats weekly is mostly trivial. What I can tell you though is that we are talking about money, and for SF to put on a tournament with a $7,500 prize pool they need 750 entrants. They have one national a year (EVO) that gets 1,000-2,000 entrants (so $10-$20,000 in prizes). Outside that the next biggest tournament is 400ish people, then progressively less. They do not have eight 250-person tournaments a year. 100+ person? Yes. 250+ person? No, they have about 4 250+ person events a year.
However, the point is about money. SF would have to host four 750 person events + a 3,500 person event just to match the payouts from MLG events. (4 events with $7,500 in payouts and 1 event with $35,000 in payouts, respectively). There has never been an SF event to even come close to $35,000 in payouts (meanwhile we've also had a $40,000 payout event back in Melee 2006).
In other words if you were to compare the 10-most-payout tournaments in a year (Again - US), Smash vs SF, Smash would win likely by a good 20-30k.
Then if you went deeper to locals Smash is right on par with SF, so the nationals would ultimately be the difference maker and Smash has way more money there.
Without MLG around I would say there is *slightly* more money in the SF scene. Again, the difference maker are the nationals, but I do think there are more 100+ person Smash events in a year than there are SF events. There are more 3/400+ person SF events though than Smash (Smash has zero 300+ person events, SF has...4ish).