well how about an option for putting your pokemon up for auction. you would choose the starting price, and the length of time (2 day or so being max). then you could also put a buy out price. so for example you could have:

a starting price be $25,000 and a buy out of $100,000
-or-
a starting price be $25,000 and a buy out of $25,000 (this way the seller would get the money on the first bid)
-or-
a starting price be $25,000 and no buy out. then the auction would continue until the specified time expires.

then if an auction time expires with out any bids being made on the pokemon then the pokemon would be returned to the seller

What about the idea of a player made clan.

these clans would form under the name of a certain player and then could have X number of members, but the benefit of being in a clan could lead to a clan tournament of some sort. and also once you are in a clan you would remain in it until removed by the leader.

their would be no limit on how many clans you may be a member of at once but you would only be able to enter a tournament under one clan name at a time.

for clan tournaments the players would need to be in a clan, then the leader would select a certain number of players, this number being 3, 5, 7,... (an odd number depending on the rules for the tournament)

then once the tournament starts randomly the players would be matched up against players of the opposing clan and battle each other with the basic tournament rules using x number of pokemon.

the winning clan would be decided on which ever clan wins the majority of the battles.

then the winning clan would proceed to the next level of the tournament, while the losing clan would be ejected.

also since i believe the clans should not be limited to just a few friends/players. the clans should be able to hold multiple users even if they are not singed in. this would work best with an array, or working off a friends list server (for those programmers out there).

if you have anything else to add or comments to add please don't hesitate to post. I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts about it and i hope you like the idea.