In my country we have olympic medalists in kayaking, rowing etc. and they are nowhere close to making any money out of it.
So, he barely won any money from the actual sport itself, but his job prospects after he retired were very good, even for someone who was in his mid-thirties and almost no real work experience.
That's the reason that in many countries the zoom Olympic athletes work for the state (soldier, police, ...) where training and representing the country at competitions are part of the Job and once the aports career is over ideally they get a job as clerk or such in the administration
These sports in general provide value in the sense that many people find them worth paying for. That's the definition of value.
Now, it's true that they're not generally excited to see the #503rd ranked player in the world play the #489th ranked player. But, the top 50 players in the world were once ranked at the bottom. They played their way up.
In other words, how would you know who are the best players in the world unless you have a large pool of professional players?
Like many, I have a lot of issues with the way tennis rankings are calculated and the way prize money is distributed. You need those lower ranked players and therefore they should be paid more.
But make no mistake D1 and Pro-Circuit players are, at the end of the day, still very good.
That is improving at something that is completely useless still. It is not even more interesting to watch than, say, 20 years ago. That progress does not help anyone.
It is not the same with sport. You being 0.05s faster swimmer does not make swimming competition more fun to watch. Same with skiing or whatever. And pretty often, the performance improvements make the sport more boring to watch due to predictable optimal tactic.
An athlete creates something that many people do happily pay for, directly or indirectly. That is value.
Not everybody considers it worth paying for, obviously. But that's not the criteria for "value." I mean, there are a lot of things other people pay for that I don't care about.
Because it does not seem to work that
way economically. There are very few people
on top who earn and massively more of those
who are in financial loss.
For many sports, the answers are "yes" and "probably not."
It's exactly the same like you could be the best jazz trumpeter in the world, and broke.
You have to be on top of a popular sport, whose events are broadcast and viewed by huge numbers of people.