There are other uses besides bragging rights. For example there were quite a few season where if you were in the silver/bronze tier in Overwatch. You'd be etern

There are other uses besides bragging rights. For example there were quite a few season where if you were in the silver/bronze tier in Overwatch. You'd be eternally paired with people who wouldn't even try to work together as a team. This issue was compounded by what I saw as a bug in how healing classes were awarded for their achievements in matches wrt ranking up. If you had a team of good friends you could rank out of it but without a boost competitive lost it's flair for me. I had a friend play my account with some of his buddies who were really good to get me into gold/plat and the public groups for competitive were much more rewarding. I'm not sure if Blizzard has fixed this ELO hell situation but, that's one anecdotal reason for 'boosting' besides bragging rights.