A guy I know is wrapping up a documentary on this stuff. About this company in particular, actually. It's a deep rabbit hole, he wrote a multi-part news story about it for 3 news in NZ, and I kinda can't wait til the doco's out. http://www.tickleking.com
Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds cover this and refer to the documentary on an early episode of outstanding The Dollop podcast. http://thedollop.libsyn.com/dollop-viii-competitive-extreme-tickli ng
Yeah, the Dollop is where I heard about this as well. Love those guys (and the now defunct Walking the Room).
I did a bit of research because I think the "Tickle King" sued the original article out of existence, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, you can still discover for yourself how deep the tickle hole goes: http://web.archive.org/web/20140603201419/http://www.3news.co.nz/H omophobia-and-competitive-tickling/tabid/418/articleID/343206/Defa ult.aspx
As long as this isn't corrupted by the homosexual agenda, I don't see what's wrong about a good ol' fashioned tickling competition. In my day, you could use whatever body parts you wanted. The goal was to win.