Overall though, sport is insane, considering that it is essentially all driven by advertising revenue one way or another and we are willing to pay basketball players 300 million for a 5 year contract, but can't rustle up a million for a cancer researcher.

That's a really good point actually and is a sad inditement of humanity and our innate greed quite frankly. At least sport brings joy and entertainment to the billions who watch it though, worse is the money spent on weaponary, wars, armies etc that cause devastation and destruction. For me this short video by Carl Sagan puts into perspective the folly of such wars and attrition on this planet given we are a speck of emotive dust in the grand scale of the cosmos.

Now, back to the sport, and I see your point about the cricket, but my point remains the same, that this break away golf league is based entirely around greed, just like the proposed European soccer super league.