Is there a downside to adding an anonymous empty delegate on event declaration?

I have seen a few mentions of this idiom (including on SO):

// Deliberately empty subscriber
public event EventHandler AskQuestion = delegate {};

The upside is clear - it avoids the need to check for null before raising the event.

However, I am keen to understand if there are any downsides. For example, is it something that is in widespread use and is transparent enough that it won't cause a maintenance headache? Is there any appreciable performance hit of the empty event subscriber call?

Instead of inducing performance overhead, why not use an extension method to alleviate both problems:

public static void Raise(this EventHandler handler, object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if(handler != null)
    {
        handler(sender, e);
    }
}

Once defined, you never have to do another null event check again:

// Works, even for null events.
MyButtonClick.Raise(this, EventArgs.Empty);

For systems that make heavy use of events and are performance-critical, you will definitely want to at least consider not doing this. The cost for raising an event with an empty delegate is roughly twice that for raising it with a null check first.

Here are some figures running benchmarks on my machine:

For 50000000 iterations . . .
No null check (empty delegate attached): 530ms
With null check (no delegates attached): 249ms
With null check (with delegate attached): 452ms

And here is the code I used to get these figures:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        public event EventHandler<EventArgs> EventWithDelegate = delegate { };
        public event EventHandler<EventArgs> EventWithoutDelegate;

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //warm up
            new Program().DoTimings(false);
            //do it for real
            new Program().DoTimings(true);

            Console.WriteLine("Done");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        private void DoTimings(bool output)
        {
            const int iterations = 50000000;

            if (output)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("For {0} iterations . . .", iterations);
            }

            //with anonymous delegate attached to avoid null checks
            var stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();

            for (var i = 0; i < iterations; ++i)
            {
                RaiseWithAnonDelegate();
            }

            stopWatch.Stop();

            if (output)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("No null check (empty delegate attached): {0}ms", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }


            //without any delegates attached (null check required)
            stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();

            for (var i = 0; i < iterations; ++i)
            {
                RaiseWithoutAnonDelegate();
            }

            stopWatch.Stop();

            if (output)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("With null check (no delegates attached): {0}ms", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }


            //attach delegate
            EventWithoutDelegate += delegate { };


            //with delegate attached (null check still performed)
            stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();

            for (var i = 0; i < iterations; ++i)
            {
                RaiseWithoutAnonDelegate();
            }

            stopWatch.Stop();

            if (output)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("With null check (with delegate attached): {0}ms", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }
        }

        private void RaiseWithAnonDelegate()
        {
            EventWithDelegate(this, EventArgs.Empty);
        }

        private void RaiseWithoutAnonDelegate()
        {
            var handler = EventWithoutDelegate;

            if (handler != null)
            {
                handler(this, EventArgs.Empty);
            }
        }
    }
}