I suspect professional sport actually discourages amateur participation. At the least there is wide spread confusion between sports fans and sports participants

I suspect professional sport actually discourages amateur participation. At the least there is wide spread confusion between sports fans and sports participants. We have some evidence of this in the UK in - participation in the wake of the 2012 London Olympics dropped significantly across the board, this despite the UK public being peddled an ‘olympic legacy’ [1] Obviously sat watching sport equals not participating. (I swim daily and enjoy it. I don’t recall ever watching a swimming race on TV or being able to name any current professional swimmers.) [1] http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/jul/05/olympic-legacy-failure-sports-participation-figures http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/jul/05/olympic...