> "And we don't watch (or play) sport to watch ads."
As long as we're talking about professional sports, players do definitely play them because of the ads. This is what pays pro athletes multimillion dollar salaries in the end - no matter what motivating lies they tell themselves (and get told by others), that is the practical purpose of the show they're putting on. Young athletes go through years of preparation, workouts, and practice with the expectation that some time afterward they'll get recruited to that sport's main league which will pay them enormous amounts of money in order to get out on a field and perform so that they'll attract millions of people to watch ads.
Slash athletes salary 10x and you’ll still have same talented athletes putting in great effort.
Most sportsmen are in it because they love competing and given activity. And lower salaries with less focus on advertising may make the activity itself better.
E.g. cycling where many pro races are shaped to be advertising-friendly first. The rest be damned.
Yep. We do the things we do for lots of reasons. Do I write code for money? A bit, yeah. But I also love it. And I connect to a community through my work, and get esteem from people, and it helps me have an impact in the world. Money is important, but so are all those other things.
And I’m sure athletes are just as complex as I am.
A friend of mine is fond of saying that we have 10 reasons for doing everything we do. We know 5 of those reasons consciously and we’ll only admit 2 reasons out loud.
As long as we're talking about professional sports, players do definitely play them because of the ads. This is what pays pro athletes multimillion dollar salaries in the end - no matter what motivating lies they tell themselves (and get told by others), that is the practical purpose of the show they're putting on. Young athletes go through years of preparation, workouts, and practice with the expectation that some time afterward they'll get recruited to that sport's main league which will pay them enormous amounts of money in order to get out on a field and perform so that they'll attract millions of people to watch ads.