My 2 cents,
I love the way you are hosting them so far, replays were interesting nonetheless, however, I see this logic:
- High Buy-in = only players confident enough to win it will participate. (This leads to small tournaments with few TOP players).
- No buy-ins = Not sustainable in the long run unless sponsored in other ways (people donating for the sake of having a tournament).
So, I see a solution here (more like an idea):
What if you do low buy-ins, aiming for the max number of players, add rewards all the way for different things, or right away giveaways between the participants, maybe more chance the more rounds you win...
And to complete the funding and for the sake of having a big prize pool, you work with Guilds.
Pvp guilds could donate to a tournament, specially if that makes most of their members play (Not just the top players from each guild).
Where I would love to land with all this is with a big tournament, where everytime you host one it is like a big event. You get 100 ish people playing, does not matter the level, everyone has the chance to win something and if in the way they end up on the top cut, they made well worth their fun investment.
Looking from the other side of the scale, from the top players point of view, I understand doing more rounds could be more "work" but Ideally you want to win a tournament beating everyone and the best ones, not the few that are ok risking X ammount of Pokedollars for fun. Also, the bigger the tournament, the bigger the audience, making it possible to scale if things goes well.
Sorry for the long wall of text, again just droping my 2 cents, hopefully this helps in anything.
PD: I'm just thinking out load ways to get "sponsorships" from guilds instead from the game itself