[dmatech]

Yep. It's probably rooted in our psychology as primates. I'm not saying this is good, but psychology is often ugly.

Men want to compete for status against other men. If women are present, it's not quite seen as a venue for male intrasexual competition in the same way. It's also possible that the greatest status in society can be found where males compete (unless you're dealing with a matriarchal society).

[robocat]

I also suspect men prefer to compete on status-ladder games of their peers. Younger men don't tend to care that much about old games played by old men. Older men sometimes care about trying to compete at new games (influencer, recent sports or recently rediscovered).

Although sometimes new status-ladders are emergent: surfing is the one I notice because of the type of people I see that say they want to surf.