“Having fewer fans who are effectively funding ever more riches also creates a paradox: the game has to work harder to sweat its “stakeholders” (viewers), which in turn adds urgency to the need for stories that “cut through” into the mainstream, hence exacerbating the industrialisation of player access and the factory-line production of quotes and storylines. Yet this media-corporate complex induces weariness and cynicism among the very people it purports to serve: the fans who love the sport in the first place. Sport is addicted to constant refinancing, just to service its self-induced interest payments. And this “necessity” to make people pay more and more may lead them to love sport less and less”
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2024/05/golf-wealth-wars-liv-manchester-city-mcilroy