Recently, I had a conversation with a tournament that is having growing pains. They want to leap into the premier quality tournaments and to do that, they need to accept more traveling teams and start rejecting some local teams that do not provide as much competition. As with most events, they can not expand to more fields because there are none. However, they have a local sponsor who is very much against them cutting local teams.
On the one hand, they need to grow to remain viable. On the other, they could lose their main sponsor if they do.
Our Advice: Growth is painful and doubly so if that growth means the loss of a sponsor. For every local sponsor, there are more regional sponsors. The trick is to convince the regional sponsor that you are a hub site that brings a soccer community together for an experience of their brand and then carries it back to their home towns; like bees pollinating flowers.
Geographic location does not matter as much for regional brands. Market saturation does. And if you can help spread their brand recognition be bringing a group together in one place, your tournament will have value for the brand as it helps them saturate more markets for a lot less cost.
A sponsor should never stunt your growth or resentment will eventually set in, your volunteers and staff will lose passion for the tournament and your event will wither into just another tournament.