As opposed to football or Indie car racing. Surfing small waves is, to be brief, a gas. You're riding these curling echoes of ocean winds and storms. In an ideal world, perhaps. But, unless you're one of the ones that wants so bad to do it and is good enough to make it reasonably worth doing all the time all around the world, you're stuck with crowds.
People love it.
They're just stoked, that's all.