Per the GDI screen of the tournament server, it says GDI is required and is free. Looking at the Advisor page, GDI is being paid for...

Interesting, I've never noticed that. On the serverdetails page, it says "All countries are forced to join GDI. The cost of GDI membership is $3 per non-cs building."

It's always been required and it's always cost money.

Ahh okay, so it's the wording inside the server which is wrong, on the page https://www.earthempires.com/tourney/manage/gdi

Says "On this server, GDI protection is free and required.", but of course it's not free

Maybe just bug on the wording inside, i.e. the GDI pages, with the express and tourny back-to-front??