Yeah,very few US companies do cons in the UK or Europe,guess it's not cost effective. Funnily enough,plenty of UK companies do cons in the US,lol! Eaglemoss do it all the time,Titan do it,SFX magazine,Panini....which is Italian by the way,but they have a lot of fun stuff in the UK as well....,even a crummy little thing like the Who Shop in London does Comic Con. Guess it's cheaper for them to go to the US than it is for the US'ers to come over here,lol! But since I love to travel I don't really care where they are. I'm there,if I wanna check'em out
I don't know how airfare compares when bought in the UK vs. in the US (I have to imagine it's the same, barring any taxes), or what the comparative rate for hotels is for London vs. San Diego, but I don't think it's cheaper for UK companies to come to the US, just more necessary.
If I'm a US company, and I sell in the US AND in the UK, I'll do more US shows, because the US is a much bigger part of my audience -- unless they're licensing somethign that is more widely known in the UK (unlikely). And if a show has to be cut, it's probably the one that costs the most to attend (with flights and freight), and reaches the smallest percentage of our audience, even if the attendance is comparable (100K for London Comic-Con, 130K for SDCC).
BUT if I'm a UK company, and I sell in both countries, I imagine the US is a pretty sizable percentage of my market, depending on the license. Titan magazines are on almost every bookstore newsstand in the US, and Eaglemoss probably has a massive US subscriber base.
Now, if we were looking to increase sales in the UK, attending UK shows might be the way to do it, but it could also probably be done through other means: advertising, promotions, etc.
A more realistic prospect might be some of the members arranging with other members to get them one...
Normally, I would say this, but I have not seen a lot of responses from people who are attending. (Besides robster.)