Does it really matter, when Blizzard ruined both sides of that equation? The story of the Koprulu Sector is a complete joke, and competitive Starcraft II is one of the biggest gaming letdowns in recent memory.
This just makes me think you have no idea how traditional sports are managed at levels above "let's get some kids together to play in the field". If anything, large corporations have much more power in traditional sports.
The most egregious error might be the company not having a genuine designer in charge of the game, which to me seems like a very corporate-y lack of respect for game design. SC2 as a whole was way too conservative. And this is just on the design side, there was greed and short-sightedness all over the place.