I'm sort of surprised at the scenes that equate main fighters they play to Naruto/DBZ or Smash/UFC, and yet I'm not. It would be really satisfying to see an area like that adopting KOF before it would adopt SF though. Odd how the Japanese area I'm in (small fishing village basically) has no scene, and the closest competitive game they've got is Pokemon on their 3DS. In that sense, consider yourselves lucky.
Only possible solution to that was the first thing choysauce brought up in the thread which was exposure. The worst thing they can do is ignore it or tell you to move off so they can put a "better" game in (response to this varies, but if it's a setup I brought, including game and system, I wouldn't budge).
And while I can't tell about a scene I have now, I can tell you what I had planned for my scene back around Detroit, and a good estimate of what would've happened.
I'd planned to hold ranbats at the best area possible for most Detroit-area players, with most of the current fighters (SSF4, U/MVC3, BB, T6, etc.) and special emphasis on KOF XIII. Tried a setup of bringing my PS2 SNK fighting collections to the same place, but that barely worked. Had I still been around, I would've held the ranbats, gotten people into KOF through just showing it off, teaching aspects about it, or holding specific tournaments for it. The presence there would still be there as of now, it'd fluxuate between people moving from game-to-game, but interest would still be there. Maybe I'd be able to make it to a tournament with a few other guys for KOF, maybe. EVO would be the big push where friends would be looking to get the game and there'd be a bigger network to teach others. It's a good 70% that that's what would've went down.
The biggest proponent to keeping people into it is to have them talking about it. Which Iori has the better Yuri Ori (taco)? Best BnBs for Shen or Benimaru? What's the easiest HD combo for Kim? How effective is Yuri's dive kick on Chin? etc.