Are we talking about the jet world masters or the U.S Scale masters. If it is the JWM then all of the guys on the U.S team build and own there own planes and they are not sponsored it all comes out of there own pockets. From the building of the plane, to the flying they do it all. They even have to put out the money to travel to which ever country they are going to compete in. If you are talking about the U.S scale masters then that's a different story because they have two different classes. There is the expert class were the builder is the owner/pilot and in the team scale class there is the builder/owner & then the pilot is the other member of the team, but he can also help with the building of the plane with out sacrificing there score. I believe they also have a Pro/Am class were the rules are different and i'm not sure how that works.