Okay, so I am an actual Pokémon Professor, let me provide some context behind this:

Pokémon Professors are people who are certified by the Pokémon Company to run officially-sanctioned Pokémon tournaments and other events. Local game shops and other events venues depend on the presence of a Pokémon Professor to ensure their events actually have official status. Being an official Play! Pokémon location which runs officially-sanctioned events increases the amount of product that wholesale distributors will send to your store, meaning local game stores rely on Professors running events to maintain their supply of product from the Pokémon Company.

Pokémon Professors get certain powers to officiate events depending on their rank and the certs they possess. For example, people who have the Judge cert can act as referees making official rulings and people with the Organiser cert can "sanction" an event and run it using the Pokémon Company's official tournament software (a piece of shit called "TOM"), causing it to become an official Play! Pokémon event where the results are recorded on the Pokémon Company's database. Sanctioned tournaments also appear on the Pokémon Company's tournament finder website which can drive a lot of customers to your event. Especially for the larger privately-hosted tournaments (League Challenges and League Cups), you need to have a Professor sanction it for people to actually come and you need at least one Professor on hand to officiate it.

Being a Pokémon Professor is sometimes profitable. Most Professors are volunteers or work for local game stores, but getting a high rank and accumulating certs can result in very lucrative gigs. For example, serving as a judge during a regional tournament is a paid role and judges get compensated somewhere between US$1200-1500 (worth of easily-sellable Pokémon product) for one weekend of work. Even the pack of promotional cards that they give Professors with every new set is worth hundreds of dollars. And some local game stores who don't have an in-house Pokémon Professor will contract it out to one they find locally.

And because Pokémon is a game which attracts lots of children, the Pokémon Company, very justifiably, requires a squeaky-clean background check. Any single blemish more serious than a speeding ticket, and you're out.