KonceptThird time I've mentioned this idea here but I'll keep repeating it because all it would really take is some people at valve talking to other people about rerouting money so that the game can start on a track to being better
Even if a tiny margin of Mann Co store sales went to a sort of pot to jumpstart more tf2 LANs and events (I'm talking less than 5% over a certain period of time, maybe a month or so), people would love to see more developer involvement as well as more comp tf2 happening than just the end of esea/etf2l/ozfortress and the iseries lans (not to say that the dreamhack tournaments are super fun to watch). This doesn't involve dipping into any pools of cash that gaben has in secret locations but rather just taking from the incoming flow and putting it back into the competitive community that's basically done the majority of the weight pulling themselves.
Valve isn't going to sponsor a third party lan, because, well, it's a third party lan. If they wanted tf2 to have a lan, they would host one themselves, on their own terms/ruleset (no whitelists/class limits, official valve-hired casters/producers etc)
Counting on valve to sponsor a community lan is just a pipe dream