@Snivy102 It's only unfortunate if you're a professional eSports player. No corporate sponsorship certainly lowers the reward pot. For everyone else, it doesn't really change anything. And more importantly it means more competitive events (that they are sponsoring) that are below the pro level, so more people will end up participating (for fun rather than for money, however.)

That said the reason why "casual" (as in non-professional?) players often dislike eSports is 1) the focus on it gets old, and the behaviors involved in competitive gaming, much like pro sports are off-puttingly obsessive to many. And the game effectively always tells you "you lose" and are not good enough until you can "win" by the nature of gaming. And the more competitive a game gets "winning" becomes being "the best" which is permanently out of reach of most people. So it interferes with the game's enjoyment for people by effectively telling you're never going to "win" or "beat the game". For many playing the game is fun because you can beat a series of set challenges....but it stops being fun if the challenge is insurmountable. 2) It's a sportsification of gaming. Some of us loathe sports, and prefer gaming specifically because it's very very different from the nature of sports. Merging the two is an unholy union. I can get sucked into the competitive nature of it (I did with Splatoon) but at a certain point enough is enough, If you're not good enough you're never going to get paid for it (most people), and if you're not going to get paid for it, at a certain point the work required exceeds being entertainment to keep up. And 3) I realize it's still young, but the culture of "eSports" is just.....not that I like sports but there's this seriousness about it and a degree of professionalism involved (most of the time) and the atheletic performance is very impressive. For eSports there's this adolescence and arrogance that seems to permeate the air of it and a degree of fakeness...like a game show more than a sport. Not always, but if you look at eSports competitions versus say a (real) FIFA match, or NFL game....the difference in atmosphere is much less becoming it. It's more like professional pool/billiards than it is like sports. Which has itself always been a frowned-upon scene in the general public.

I'm not really against it specifically, but as for why people not involved in it might greatly either dislike it personally or have zero interest in it, there's plenty of big reasons. That ties in with the statements....a very small portion of the market is engaged in eSports....there's not much benefit to Nintendo putting money into that. It's not like eSports aren't developing out of it anyway.....and the big eSports money is and always will be on PC where component and peripheral hardware mfrs are sponsors on a much bigger level than a console company can be.

I suspect eSports is a lot more appealing for high school into college age kids than for adults though. It's a way to do the sports thing for those who are not athletic and "belong." But that of course is Nintendo's LEAST likely demographic.