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Many years ago when I was still a sports reporter, one of my colleagues was sent out to do what is known in the trade as a "vox pop". This is short for vox populi, or the voice of the people, and consists of asking a few passers-by in the street what they think about some recent development.

My friend was supposed to ask people what they thought about the possible appointment of a new manager for the local football team, Derby County - a major club in those days and still in what we then called the First Division.

As luck would have it the first person he asked replied: "I don't care who manages Derby County. If they played in my front garden I would close the curtains." And having expressed some sympathy for our colleague and had a good laugh at his expense the sports department agreed this was probably the most sensible of all the replies collected. None of us contemplated for a moment the idea of actually putting it in the newspaper.

Why not? Because professional sport, as a profitable enterprise, a public entertainment and a way of attracting readers and viewers, depends on everyone concerned sustaining the illusion that what goes on in the pitch, field, court or pool is important. Readers who are interested will find this idea and its implications explored at length in an excellent book by Leonard Koppett, Sports Illusion, Sports Reality.

In professional sports, none of the spectators are taking healthy exercise. They are all paying to get in. As an entertainment it is rather like the circus: people who have spent years cultivating superhuman skills display them for our admiration and enjoyment.

These musings were provoked by Sunday's sports pages which were full, as they often are these days, with stories about the importance of sport and, hence, the importance of it being generously financed by the government.

The golf people complain that their competition was not subsidized this year, and last year's money has been slow arriving. Tennis is being readmitted to the "elite" group who get the use of a center in Fo Tan, and other goodies, but not until 2015, and they want it now. Cricket has a gripe about some tournament which was not subsidized, and soccer has an expensive publicly-funded scheme to "revive the game" if they can ever stop quarrelling with each other long enough to implement it.

All this is presented as a matter of great pitch and moment, as William Shakespeare put it, with important implications for all of us. But the truth is quite different. Actually, none of it matters at all.

It would be too churlish and puritanical, perhaps, to suggest the government should stop throwing money at this bunch of sturdy beggars and spend it on feeding the hungry. After all people need circuses as well as bread. The general rule with government money is that if you stop them wasting it on one thing they will waste it on something else.

I can also see a case for providing free or subsidized space. Sports generally need a lot of space and a government which keeps land prices high owes some help to people who have legitimate non-commercial needs for large pieces of real estate, especially after being so generous to the horse casinos.

But once you've dealt with that you have to wonder about further distributions. Hong Kong is a small place. Does it matter if we do not shine in international competitions, especially when so many of us are prepared to let the Chinese teams shine on our behalf? Why are some professionals favored and others not? Do we need the foreigners we see on television to come to Hong Kong and perform in the flesh? And if so how much is it worth paying for this privilege?

The author's work in journalism has won him honors in the Hong Kong News Awards and the International Radio Festival of New York. He is well known as a columnist, reviewer and broadcaster.

(HK Edition 12/11/2013 page1)