[pzduniak]

Or, hear me out, it's purely a cultural thing. Some communities are into hockey, wrestling, soccer, football etc. You could say the same thing about ski jumping, yet it's extremely popular in a few EU countries and pretty well funded. AFAIU barely anyone gave a shit about gymnastics in the US before Biles - if we have pipelines for young athletes to succeed, their sports can absolutely become regionally popular, sufficiently for them to be self sustainable through direct sponsorships.

[ANewFormation]

Another example of this was chess with Bobby Fischer. Before Fischer there was minimal interest in chess on the US. But he caused a 3000%+ increase in membership of the US Chess Federation, to say nothing of casual players, and is largely responsible for the growth of chess in the US.

[viraptor]

It can change really quickly too, with the top contenders coming from new countries. For example Polish population changed in 2001 from "what's skijumping?" to "skijumping is the new national sport" just because Adam Małysz won many medals and has a fun personality.

[jalapenos]

I think that popularity isn't random but comes from the region, and in those cases they are in fact paid well.

E.g. ice hockey in Canada, makes sense that people living in such a cold place are going to gravitate to such a sport.

EU countries - guessing those near the Alps right, not say Portugal? Biles - because it was their country winning. Outside of that they didn't care about the sport.