As someone that grew up in the US and watching it with family, no, it's not the same. What is the same is watching Cricket. It probably has an even larger viewing audience than American Football in the US. As someone that has grown up with it, and they will start spewing rules at you that might as well be spoken in Klingon for the sense they make, but are perfectly understood by those that grew up with it. To be fair, reversing the conversation for me to explain rules to them is met with looks like I have 2 heads.
Video games are similar. I grew up in the "golden age" of home console games starting with Atari 2600, NES, and through today. However, I still spent time doing other things other than games. So to me, sitting around watching other people play video games is a non-starter. Maybe if I was at a bar and it was on the screen, but usually I just find a different screen. For people that are younger that don't have memories of playing outside and only know "playing" involving a computer device of some sort, then this seems perfectly reasonable that's what they'd rather watch.