I still feel the sponsorship/pro market is relatively pre-mature in gaming but its clear that it is making large strides to establish standards and also work to both the player's and the sponsor's advantage. Its a new and emerging market that is still feeling itself out.
With PC gaming sponsorship, the ability to attach a wider array of relevant companies to a player is much easier as is evident with many sponsored FPS guys. They have graphics, CPU, mobo, input device, case mods, etc companies clamoring to get some semblance of association with the player's preferred hardware, which can be very effective at shifting units and providing income for both sides of the fence.
As I see it for fighting games, the motivation behind a dedicated sponsor I personally cannot see yielding great returns. Unless there is something I am missing, I'm just not seeing what bounces back to the sponsors themselves. Sure, we have a small amount of hardware promotion in the FGC (Madcatz) but there really isn't a great deal else for players to float from a promotional perspective that I can see. For fighting games, I am really surprised screen manufacturers haven't hopped on board to offer lagless options considered acceptable to top players for example.
I can however see sponsors playing a part in large events by way of completely unrelated material that only seeks to feed off the exposure large tournaments offer. Say you had an event that attracted a few hundred (or thousand - EVO?) participants. Thats a large market to expose a product or service to which in many ways could be completely unrelated to fighting games, but still be an effective promotional platform because of the audience it gets presented to. Perhaps you could identify something that presents a common thread of interest in fighting game players, but frankly I find that difficult to pin down. The irony to me about the FGC (from a promotion perspective) is that it attracts an otherwise wholly diverse range of people who come together quite simply because of their love of fighting games. Outside of that, they are quite honestly a very diverse bunch of people. Some niche avenues you can promote widely attractive stuff to that group. With fighting game fans, outside of the game itself and maybe a stick, there's bugger all you can really offer us relative to the game and our means of playing it to be honest or perhaps I'm over simplifying.
Anywho, getting back to it, I think the best part about the sponsor deals we are seeing lately is that they in effect facilitate the players' ability to travel and compete in tournaments with subsidies in the expenses involved (entry, travel, and in some cases accommodation) which allows them as players to really soak up a tonne of experience in the games they love. I think thats pretty awesome for folks keen on the sponsorship thing. If you're not sponsored, you have to fork out for everything yourself, which quickly adds up. Consider Shadowloo.com's recent Shadowloo Showdown tourney in Melbourne - for those of us who made the trip from Sydney and beyond, the costs mounted when you factor in food, booze, accommodation, entry, etc. For sponsored players, some of those costs are offset which is kinda neat, allowing them to compete more often without it making such a dent in their wallet.
As with any sponsor affiliation though, you need to do your part in promoting the interests/products/services of your promoter. Given how niche the fighting game community's sponsors have been so far, its hardly a big ask on their part. Maybe wear a tshirt, drop the name a few times, recommend a product. All this stuff is part of the deal and a small price to pay provided your sponsor offers a decent deal by signing up to them. From what Marn is saying it sounds like he agreed to a deal which perhaps had a bit of fine print or perhaps wasn't as sweet as he (and folks outside looking in) thought it was.
A TTC deal would be interesting. You'd then have Marn, Toxy and Tokido all batting for the same team who are all massive IV players AND are pretty keen on MVC3 which so far is shaping up to be massively popular and is likely to attract large amounts of players to tournaments. I guess we'll have to wait and see
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