Are you kidding me?
Are you saying professional sports are staged?
Not in the sense that the results are predetermined. But in every other sense that matters, they’re highly staged. They have very high production values and are carefully tuned to produce the maximal dramatic tension.
Well, that’s where it all went wrong, then. IMHO.
Though I am someone who doesn’t watch sports.
Obviously you’ve never watched how sports work in less-than-affluent countries.
Here in Peru were football is the “only” sport you get first-division games with fewer than 1000 people in horrible stadiums.
For example, every May 1st (labour day in Peru) there is “Mundialito del Porvenir” (mini World Cup of “el Porvenir” an area in the blue-collar district of “La Victoria”), where 16 teams representing local companies play. The teams basically don’t exist for the other 364 days of the year. Players are hired ex profeso for one day. They play on the street and still people love it. Watch this video- and you’ll see the low production values.
But not all of them can succeed. Sports is a competition. Not everyone is going to win – there’s going to be a loser.
People are assholes. And that’s not the majority of sports fans.
Because that’s not what sports is about. Competition is a part of it, like it or not. Rivalries are often in good spirit. People like to have something to root for. Part of the fun is cheering when your team wins, getting all excited at the idea of a championship, making signs, wearing team gear, yelling, high-fives, etc. This whole, “yay, everybody wins!” isn’t reality.
If you talk to athletes, a lot of them will say that they try to keep it on the field, and not make it personal. And while they may be friends with other people on the other team, on the field/ice/track, whatever, that’s no longer the case. It’s all about the team, not the individual.
As Herb Brooks once said, "You’re looking for players whose name on the front of the sweater is more important than the one on the back. I look for these players to play hard, to play smart, and to represent their country.” (Seriously, without competition, would the Miracle On Ice have been nearly as thrilling? No, it wouldn’t have been. Not at all.)
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Penguins game to watch. 
Several things:
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I was responding to Leaffan, who specifically mentioned professional sports.
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I wasn’t trying to form a complete explanation for the existence of sports. In fact, I think tribalism alone is a mostly sufficient explanation. But there’s a little more going on than just that, especially in the developed world.
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Even the poorest countries are likely to have drama-enhancing features such as distinctive costumes and color commentators. Why do they have someone that yells GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAL even though everyone in the stadium saw what happened? Because it increases the excitement. In fact, even if you don’t have any of that, the mere presence of a crowd adds to the excitement. Someone with no access to the game at all except through listening to the crowd can still get a good sense of the ebb and flow of the game.
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In developed countries, sports have to compete with other highly polished forms of entertainment, like movies and TV. In less developed areas, there’s less competition and they can get away with lower production values. That doesn’t mean it’s fundamentally different. Even though the local community college production of Les Mis is pretty rough compared to the Broadway or Hollywood versions, it’s still going for the same basic effect.
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The clip you posted looked mostly like an excuse to have a fun street fair with the food and other attendant bits. I’m sure people were rooting for “their” company’s team, but I doubt anyone was taking it too seriously. Not quite the same thing as “real” sports, which people get really worked up about.
I will be hot as FISH GREASE if the Giants lose to the Redskins tomorrow
The thing I hate about these sorts of threads is that people don’t seem to realize that, if you don’t understand something, you’re the one who is ignorant. And you don’t get to argue with someone who is trying to explain it to you just becasue you feel differently?
Do you want to know, or do you want to brag? You can’t do both.
Anyways, the answer, as far as I can tell–both in myself and others–is that sports are more fun to watch when you have someone to root for. You get the fun of friendly competition without actually competing in any way yourself.
It’s just vicariousness, the exact same reason we enjoy movies and film where we identify with the characters. The difference is that, in sports, there are no inherent protagonists and antagonists, so we choose our own.
Some people like me only mostly do it on a game-by-game basis. Other people pick a team and follow them, and thus that because their protagonist.
It’s really not that hard to understand if you compare it with the other forms of entertainment that people enjoy.
And I barely watch sports, BTW. I mostly do it for the social aspect.
International sports pretty much are.
Additionally, the likes of Yorkshire Cricket Club up to 1992 stipulated that all players had to be born in Yorkshire.
There’s a bunch of ancient Greek athletes over here who seem pretty keen to disagree with you.
Quite simply, a large part of the fun and excitement of sports and games, whether you’re playing them or watching other people playing them, comes from pretending that it matters who wins.
(And yes, some people are better at such pretending than others. And yes, some people take it too far, and forget that it doesn’t really matter.)
I’m annoyed by fans who don’t show no emotion at all after a game
What do ancient Greeks have to do with modern day sports?
And yes, international sports are clearly region versus region (it’s right there in the name). But that doesn’t matter when we were discussing pro sports leagues like the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL.
So you’re annoyed by fans who show emotion after a game? 
Precisely not what’s happening. Even though I’m not interest in sports, I can understand rooting for your friends playing, rooting for your local small amateur team, and even rooting for the national team. But rooting for a bunch of guys who just happen to use the name of the city you live in even though they don’t have any connection to it leaves me puzzled.
I’m obviously more familiar with soccer, so, say people from Rennes rooting for the Rennes soccer team, made up with a Senegalese, an Italian, a French guy from Strasbourg, etc… who will next year be replaced by a Croat, a British and an Algerian makes absolutely no sense to me.
I could also understand people rooting for a specific player, regardless of what team happened to “buy” him this year, but people don’t generally do that.
Are they just pretending? Some people seem to be truly pissed when their team loses, and overjoyed when it wins.
Actually, these last two paragraphs go together for me and make perfect sense. I don’t necessarily develop any long-term loyalty to individual players. But I do develop long-term loyalty to the organization that set up roots in my community/city/region/country and acts as a representative of that area. So even if Smith, Jones and Rodriguez get replaced by White, Matthews and Lopez, the organization is still the Los Angeles Gridlocks, and that’s what I’m rooting for. Because the Gridlocks organization is still trying to bring a championship to Los Angeles even if Smith, Jones and Rodriguez no longer are.
Do you watch movies? What are some of your favourites?
I think that’s how it works everywhere for soccer. The worst teams of the competition are downgraded to a lower division, to be replaced by the best teams of this lower division that are upgraded.
However, since major teams are affluent and can afford the best players in the world, there’s no chance they could do so bad that they’d end up in a lower division (unless the club goes bankrupt). So the major teams are always there. You’re not going to see Liverpool or the Real Madrid kicked out of their first league anytime soon.
I don’t like fans who root for the same team as me saying…“well it was a good game”
That makes my blood boil