My old high school plays the same game. In their ads on the radio, they will say our current graduates earned $X in college scholarships. They gather that number by adding all the scholarship offers the kids get, so if one kid gets scholarship offers from 5 colleges, they add them all up when announcing the number although the student can only accept 1 of the scholarships.
It seems from this report, that Miss America takes that idea to ridiculous extremes when they say $45M when it is probably closer to $3-5M.
As for the larger issue that perhaps they shouldn't have these pageants, I say nonsense. If people are willing to participate and there is an audience for these things (which doesn't include me, by the way, but does include my wife), I say knock yourselves out.
