Not really, because people might be willing to "donate" a certain amount of money in total within a period, say, in 1 year. Therefore if you put too much resources into 1 event, you might have the rest affected. For example, in year 2000, Singapore had a lot of chess events and many of them gave high cash prizes. In year 2001 the circle became much more quiet, probably even more quiet than 1997. Afterward it became worse and worse with the economy until about 2005.

In the recent few years we can see many tournaments had the cash prizes cut short, partly due to funding issues. Sadly to say, the reason why more team tournaments instead of individual tournaments are organized is mainly due to the ratio of funding vs number of participants.

However on the other hand, we can see that organizing a tournament might not need that much money, regardless whether it's a team or individual one, even though every winner wishes the figure to increase. :) The more important thing is still whether there are clubs or people willing to organize popular tournaments and benefit more players.