I know in Northern California they do something similar with 2 tournaments a month and sets of weekly locals and different games in between.
I think the biggest issue with some locals is that there isn't a consistent place to meet and have a monthly or weekly gathering. Finding a place can be difficult because of costs and convenience.
Having a set schedule and a set place to meet with set ups is a luxury that I wish other communities could have and enjoy.
We have a real arcade with dedicated fighting game set ups and cabs that has a $6 all day special for us to use 2 days a week (Tues/Sat). There's also a LAN center that offers to let us play there on Fri for $5 all night. It's more of a problem of how spread out we are though, it's TN. there are 8~ people around the Nashville area within 30 minutes~ of each other, but the rest of the people are around 1-2 hours away. To add to that things have been pretty poverty at points in the last few years so getting around past that has been hard.
It's been kinda rough with the anime scene here dying tbh. We normally have Thanksgiving every year and I remember there being 20+ people all weekend long hanging out. This year we had 7 people across 2 days show up. I've tried to rally up fun projects from time to time, but it hasn't panned out too well. The worst was when UNI came out I convinced the arcade owner to sponsor us a tournament, and he gave us $100 as a pot bonus with free entry. Only 12 people entered :T He went on to sponsor us for Xrd ranbats and that was mildly successful, but a lot of people bailed on it on the last day.
Seems like a massively wasted opportunity tbh. Wish I knew what to do to help get it back going, but I think it's completely out of my control at this point. I'll admit I'm pretty jaded at this point because I've put in a lot of effort and it's still led to this ;;
Also we have the opposite problem of people getting into new games hilariously enough. People tend to play a new game for a month or two, then bail on it to go back to whatever they were playing before. I get if you don't like it(I've tried some stuff that hasn't panned out) but no new game has a chance here unless it's called SF or GG it looks like. We've even had new people show up wanting to play newer games and then not coming back cause nobody was playing them, which seems like it's the opposite of most players to me..
I'm kinda just moaning to moan but I really would like to get stuff going again it's just bleeeeeeeeggggghhhhhh. Also I don't have the disposable income to throw at events or else I would.