At the root of it, they earn a living by being entertainment. This can be applied to any of the arts or sports. Why are smart people making movies, writing fiction, making music? I think these are the sorts of things that make life worth living.

Abstract strategy games require highly domain specific skills. These skills do not transfer to other endeavors. The world champion Go player might just end up as, had he not played Go, a mid-level lawyer or manager. Who knows. Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=nCMWxjkTAvEC&pg=PA130&lpg=...

Didn't happen in Chess, won't happen in Go. Entertaining a few million people is too lucrative. Everyone wants to cheer for their country in an international competition, so it's always going to have large prize pools.

Uh, talent for Go doesn't translate automatically into talent for math, physics, finance or other branches of science. Even if they are, being the top Go player is probably more attractive than being a meh quant or programmer.

This could equally apply to the bankers -- and the software engineers who enable them -- who crashed the economy in 2008. Go and chess players have contributed much more to the world than these psychopaths.