Old Akro, all fair points and I bow to your experience and wisdom in such matters and to be perfectly honest, with your background, I suspect you know some of the players in this and perhaps a bit more about what are the possible going ons behind the scenes.
From a lay persons point of view this seems more like an Event than some sort of Trade Show or some such and I am curious as to why there would be any legal reasons as to why an event holder is unable to legally have an exclusive right to the show in return for their sponsorship? Is there an easy way to explain it? Someone brought up the analogy of say AFL Matches, sponsors such as Coca Cola or Four n Twenty having exclusive rights, I would have thought this would be similar to that?