There is one critical element that has been overlooked here: FiM was a volunteer-driven organization. So unfortunately, pointing at a map and saying "district here" won't cut it. In order to spread the system, the region needs to be established, and have enough volunteers to step up above the team level to manage the region, otherwise, FIRST will still need to spend money on professionals to run that area.
Anyways, for a good divide-and-conquer evaluation, see Paul's post
here .
-Alex