> Sports teams may be a very poor example because they’re similar to movie stars - the workers are _also_ the sales folks in those labor markets. Not a lot of engineers have the kind of influence to bring entire swaths of investment and interest besides celebrity engineers basically.

Small nitpick that sports players are more like marketing, not sales. Sports teams have armies of sales everywhere. But your sentiment is right - each individual player is a symbol that markets the team. This is true in large leagues with famous players.

That said, even in leagues with little audience, management and execs still draw much lesser pay than players. It's because the punishment for mismanaged team is lower wins/positions in the league and thus, lower awards and sponsorships. Sponsors want to pay the winners, not the losers and the only way winners win is by paying the players who actually play.

An (not perfect) equivalent in ad tech industry would be - ad buyers buying ads in meta as opposed to Twitter, where all players were not retained.