The reason catacup works is because we don't really pay for much. The regatta organizers do an amazing job of finding sponsors to defray the costs to the competitors. Each hotel donates some rooms, rental car agencies donate cars, shipping companies ship the container for free and so forth. This is a HUGE undertaking that I don't believe would be possible many places besides an island with such an amazing group of people behind this regatta, interested parties in sponsoring it and etc. St. Barths comes together to host lots of events like this.
It's around 12K just to ship a container back and forth in the U.S. not going to be cheap to ship one to the Philipines and back.
That being said, if you could make it cost next to nothing it might make sense. But who's gonna do all the work?
Something else to think about, catacup started small, like 20 boats or something 4 or 5 years ago. Mostly euro boats and a few from the islands. There are now around 10 F18s on St. Barths, a few on St. Martin, and more on neighboring Islands that come for the event. But obviously the majority is euros and a few from the U.S. there were 3 or 4 containers this year.