hey kid a, seems like james chen shares the same sentiment as you
https://twitter.com/jchensor/status/592812836193214464
http://capcomprotour.com/standings
I just seen that, but Mike Ross said that people love to fly out the Asian players over, and not the other way around.
That is definitely true, but Asians are traveling abroad even without r/kappa and Shouta. Kazunoko and Infiltration weren't flied out to every US tournament they have been in. Infiltration used the r/kappa tag for NCR, but I'm pretty sure he paid for his own trip. Kazunoko paid for his own trip to Final Round. Bonchan has paid for his own trip.
That's without even mentioning all the Asian players that have already planned to attend future Premiere tournaments on there own. Reiketsu, Eita, Shiro, etc... have already confirmed to be going overseas.
The problem is that American players with Sponsors don't bother going overseas. That's probably due to the difference in reward even with much tougher competition. In Asia, the prize money won't be as good as tournaments in the US and the competition will be harder.
It's only going to get worse. There are only 5 (6 if you count PR) more US ranking events for them to pick up points at. There are 9 more Asian ranking events. There are 4 Asian Prem. tournaments left and all of the Western prem. events will be filled with Asians, sponsored or not. I think this is good for the scene. It increases the competition from event to event ensuring the best players (no matter the region) go to Capcom Cup while also bringing more hype and entertainment for both players and viewers.