It always seemed to me to be a lot like a slightly less offensive version horse racing, with much the same profile - e.g. 90% of people watching it only care because it's something to gamble on.

Edit: Also reminds me a bit of what I beleive is called royal or court tennis, an extremely rare (there's only something like 30 playing venues in the world) variant of tennis that is played on a special enclosed court with some of the walls and ceiling being in play, and also certain parts of the walls are angled in specfic ways so apparently all kinds of chaos occurs.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Jesmond-...