user2590: The Grand Chess Tour 2017 events use delay, not increment, according to event regulations.
Have the organizers made an official statement as to why, or is there a consensus on what the unofficial reason is?

user4424: As literally everyone hated this pseudo-novelty, Grand Chess Tour reacted on some guy's tweet 'I see! I imagine the results are more decisive with the delay?'.
GCT answered that 'Yes and increment is confusing for spectators who aren't familiar with chess clocks', which is ridiculously wrong.
I had a much harder time explaining this strange delay rule to my non-chess-players colleagues than to explain them the simple increment one. I am not even sure I understand it properly myself, and I guess I am not the only one.
Another suggestion was that replacing increment with delay would limit the amount of time a game can last. But you could simply switch to 3min+2s if that is the real goal. I think the real goal behind that was to try to get the tournament to a format acceptable for TV broadcast, which is obviously what all tournament sponsors are dreaming of (money money).
But the most likely reason was to catch the players in situation they aren't familiar with and create time trouble, to make the games and results more spectacular and decisive. Again, that serves the goal of making the sport more exciting to the global audience to hope for TV broadcast.
See this article from chess24 where they discuss on this (point number 4)

2590: <p>The Grand Chess Tour 2017 events use delay, not increment, according to <a href="http://grandchesstour.org/sites/default/files/2017%20GCT%20Event%20Regulations.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">event regulations</a>.</p>

<p>Have the organizers made an official statement as to why, or is there a consensus on what the unofficial reason is?</p>
 4424: <p>As literally everyone hated this pseudo-novelty, Grand Chess Tour reacted on some guy's tweet 'I see! I imagine the results are more decisive with the delay?'.
GCT answered that 'Yes and increment is confusing for spectators who aren't familiar with chess clocks', which is ridiculously wrong.
I had a much harder time explaining this strange delay rule to my non-chess-players colleagues than to explain them the simple increment one. I am not even sure I understand it properly myself, and I guess I am not the only one.</p>

<p>Another suggestion was that replacing increment with delay would limit the amount of time a game can last. But you could simply switch to 3min+2s if that is the real goal. I think the real goal behind that was to try to get the tournament to a format acceptable for TV broadcast, which is obviously what all tournament sponsors are dreaming of (money money).</p>

<p>But the most likely reason was to catch the players in situation they aren't familiar with and create time trouble, to make the games and results more spectacular and decisive. Again, that serves the goal of making the sport more exciting to the global audience to hope for TV broadcast.</p>

<p>See this <a href="https://chess24.com/en/read/news/11-conclusions-from-the-2017-leuven-gct" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article from chess24</a> where they discuss on this (point number 4)</p>
