I would ask another question: if the "hype" about traditional sports, like football (soccer), basketball, NFL, car racing is worth the money sunk on advertising

I would ask another question: if the "hype" about traditional sports, like football (soccer), basketball, NFL, car racing is worth the money sunk on advertising there? I have a gut feeling that most of the money spent on investing in sports seems to be wasted - with relatively low returns. "Brand building" is just an empty promise and much better results could be achieved spending this money in a better way. It feels that companies invest in advertising in a particular sport only because the CEO likes that particular sport; obviously the consulting companies will come with some bullshit slides to defend it. E-sports never really managed to get this hype - and in e-sports the companies more often try to track return on investment, which is probably low. In regular sports we have companies like Gasprom spending hundreds of millions on advertisements - why? (I mean less money for tanks at least) On a side note: for e-sports some companies spent money so much smarter, say some graphic card companies sponsor weekly tournaments (costs them peanuts - say 1 graphic card per week) - which is probably lower cost than spending one time on some big ticket event, or sponsoring a team, about which nobody cares about - because viewers track particular players. In general most money spend on marketing is poorly tracked and effectively wasted; anyone who actually looked more into it can see how the agencies barely even bother to track real stats. Investment in sport feels especially unprofitable - mostly vanity projects of decision makers. For example Chevrolet sponsored Manchester United - for millions, while not selling their cards in Europe.. Ewanick was fired for that deal.