I meant zero sum in the closed loop of the game itself. Only one team can win, the reason why they are paid so much is because they have built an audience and the sponsors/teams are effectively built around advertising revenue and/or sales of merch.

Agreed on the distribution of who wins and who loses, most people don't lose money playing basketball. However, the point I am trying to make is writing off poker as "not productive" simply because it is monetarily zero sum (or negative sum in the case of raked games) is a disservice to the game itself.

>In the top 1% of basketball games and the top 1% of poker games, they are sponsored and no one loses money.

I don't know, I hear lots of sports fans complain about the money earned by athletes that one might think that the owners are only moments from bankruptcy because of those greedy players' salaries!