Corporate sponsorship is certainly a possibility. Sponsors are dumping huge amounts of money into online gaming teams as we speak. They don't really sponsor individual races, but the teams that win the races, and hence draw the fans to their websites or to buy the products they use. GT4 is an equally valid game to sponsor, if a legitimate team and league structure with a strong spectator crowd develops. This may be beyond the reach of a simple fan-organized division, but I think it's a start.
However, so much depends on how the final structure of online play works out. Will there be spectators? How many? How can replays be saved? Can they be spread across the net to potential spectators? Can the races be secured and guaranteed cheat free? None of these questions can really be answered until we can play the game.
If these problems come down in our favor, though, it will cerainly be possible to organize some sort of events. As has been mentioned before, I think MLG and probably some more leagues will organize at least a few tournaments for cash - GT4 will be THE console racing game. But if we're talking about a full, regular season - that's a bit tougher, and will take a lot more legwork on our end.
Of course, the other option was more along the lines that Greyout brought up before - everyone pays in to enter a race (from a couple pounds to many many pounds), and then the winner takes all or some derivative thereof. This is also a valid model of for cash prizes, though the backend work is much harder.
And we will also have to operate under the assumption we would receive PD's good graces. If they have their own ideas to sponsor their own tournaments, then we may be in trouble that way to run our own cash tournaments. Again, we have to wait and see.
My modest suggestion would be to put together a team of people who are interested in the concept and willing to put in some effort to make it work. We can lay some of the groundwork now, and it may end up as useless come Christmas season. But for people who are enthusiastic about the concept, it's interesting to talk about regardless.
Also note the level of interest in "online racing" and teams that was generated around GT3 here at GTPlanet. I don't want to make assumptions about the interest in this by Jordan and the team here, but there's really no better community to launch this in. If it does end up where there is a structure or racing teams and a league, I don't think it should compete with GTPlant's community.
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