Yeah, the market often comes to weird conclusions. But in the end, what’s the alternative, right? If they put me in charge of everything we’d expend a whole lot less in: sports, social media websites… our diets could be a lot more rice and bean based… anyway, probably it is better not to micromanage this stuff too much.
The only reason NFL is as popular as it is, is because of decades of very intentional top-down pushing of it on society everywhere from schools to government, television, radio, etc. It's not a natural development at all. That goes for several other sports as well.
Disagree, it is the most compelling American sport on a lot of levels - some people simply like the pure violence, but it also has the most diverse types of athlete (runners, throwers, catchers, kickers, blockers), the most diverse and interesting scoring plays, the largest rosters (so more personalities), the most types of scoring which then leads to most strategic decisions, most intense clock management, most debatable referee calls, most complex plays (22 individuals), a natural scarcity (only 17 games), possibility of the defense scoring on any play, and a few more reasons. Even college football is more popular than most professional sports. Football is a unique sport that actually is really, really interesting to watch.
I mean… they advertise for themselves extensively, unfortunately lots of organizations do. I’m not sure I see the grand conspiracy. Or at least, I’m not sure how to parse the conspiracy out from, just, lots of people liking sports.