Wouldn’t that money be spent on lesser known, lesser popular events? Or even projects like photographing the effects of climate change etc - the events that for-profit media is unlikely to cover?
That being said, we're not just covering the big fancy events. We've done hundreds of events from indigenous festivals to minor league sports to science conferences. We've also donated equipment to wiki communities in Kenya, Ghana, and Benin to photograph their local events and culture, which are very undercovered on-wiki. The big events are what gets a lot of visibility and make the headlines but we do a lot more than that.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiPortraits_by...
Licenses do matter, just like open source.
Raising funding for Wikipedia, then diverting 90% of the funds for pet projects is dishonest at best, and most likely fraudulent.
The other problem, is that the projects wikimedia foundation has historically funded have a notable political bias, to the point where it has been accused of being a pseudo-PAC.