First of all, thank you for your reply.

> It sounds like you already sort of know the answer.

Maybe, but I'm also sort of stupid. Which prompted me to write all this, so maybe I'll figure it out for myself (and, hopefully, others too - surely, I'm not unique in this regard).

> where you need to recognize (which you already seem to) that you hold a minority opinion.

Yea... I had this assumption as a possible truth, but I have no idea how true is it ("am I sure?"), and what exactly is different ("why?").

> Strategy, and the creativity required, is absolutely at the core of any team sport

For sure, although I originally thought more about individual disciplines, like the 100m sprints (the primary topic here), which surely have some strategy to them as well, but I would be very surprised if it's something complex.

So I'm not even sure if people are watching sports because they relate with the athletes. Certainly not universally, and I have no idea how much it is the case.

Even with the team sports, I'm confused:

> "uh, that looks complicated/fast-paced..." but games are all the same to me, it's all just pressing buttons - nothing in my brain fires off.

Thank you for this. It totally makes sense to me, but this is also one thing that makes me question the "minority opinion" hypothesis. I haven't explicitly went into details and just barely touched that with "I don't have experience running fast so I cannot relate with runners - no clue what they're doing" idea, but I thought about it and it confused me.

I brought e-sports to the picture, because it's relatively (compared to pro non-e-sports) niche thing. I believe they are interesting to me because I can actually understand what's going on there. Just like that chess example (I don't watch chess because I don't play it) - I can watch a football or basketball or tennis match and have no idea on what the players are doing out there even if I know the rules. So I made a logical conclusion that to watch sports, one must likely understand it. And for understanding something, surely one needs to have some experience in the matter (at amateur level)? This all definitely feels true for e-sports - while one may not perform at the level - anyone can try things out (and save for extra-complex micro-level mechanics that require physical dexterity can even make it work... occasionally).

And this is where it doesn't click. I always had an assumption that e-sports are niche because player base is low (compared to the overall population numbers). Folks who play $game may watch $game tournaments, some may not play but watch with friends (rarely) - and I guess that's about it. So I tried to find the numbers, comparing involvement with engagement.

And I found a statement that about 72% of Americans watch American football, and a statement that only 5-6M people are playing it. So, there are drastically more viewers than players. For comparison, I looked up stats for Dota 2 and found that TI10 (the Super Bowl equivalent) had 2.7M peak viewer count, and there is around 14M MAU. I looked up other games and it all seems that viewer count << MAU for e-sports, while the inverse is true for non-e-sports.

Which seem to invalidate my hypothesis of "should play to watch". And that generates a lot of questions (from "why is it so different", though "am I actually right assuming that people understand what they're watching?" to "if you don't play, why learn the game?" and so on).

And the same (back to the original topic of individual disciplines) applies to the 100m sprints. Can't find the breakdowns, but it seems that there are still drastically more viewers than people who run in any capacity. Here I'm back to "our athlete vs others", as I don't have any better ideas how to explain it.

I sort of feel that the answer that makes sense is somewhere out there, really close - yet I'm still honestly confused and can't really grasp it. Sorry.

> I'd put all my money in on betting that there's no Star Trek future that doesn't have sports

Haha, no, I won't take that bet. The idea of sports may change depending on what kind of future is out there, but competition is deeply ingrained in our human nature. But the modern idea sports may not survive, especially as more people start to debate what's "natural" and what's "doping".