From live sports not being broadcast due to the broadcaster not having the rights in your area, to live broadcasts being bombarded with advertisements, to leagues deciding against putting a team in a city because it’s not profitable enough even if the sport is popular in the city (see Quebec in the NHL), to rich leagues from the global core stealing all the talent from the rest of the world leaving competitions in the global south worse off. I could go on and on.
It convinces kids and families that they will be able to escape their oppression by getting rich in the NBA or NFL. Its an unfortunately very effective tool to destroy revolutionary consciousness. I don’t think it is a coincidence that there was an explosion of famous black athletes following the Civil rights era, or that none of them became a Muhammad Ali like figure.
Players are discarded like trash the moment they get “uppity”. Best example is (don’t know the spelling) Kaepernick.