I Don't Get Sports Games

I like to play basically every single genre of games, I don't care if it's a military FPS or a swords and sorcery RPG, it's all good to me.  However there is one genre of game that I tend to stay quite far away from and that's sports games.

I am not a sportsman and I tend to stay away from sports in real life too.  Sure, I don't mind playing a little bit of something from time to time with a few friends for the sake of getting some good exercise, but I have no interest whatsoever in professional sports and the people involved in them.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that sports games or real sports suck, their just not my cup of tea.

But even with that in mind, sports video games fucking baffle me.  They baffle me in two ways in particular and I'm going to outline them in the hopes that someone will stumble across this post and explain the fascination to me.

The first way is the very concept itself of a sports game.  I understand something like a racing game, because the idea of someone going out and buying a vehicle capable of competitive racing is just too much.  However I don't understand things like Football (soccer) games or any other sports games because their isn't really any reason you couldn't go outside with a bunch of friends and play some.  I've never once in my life met a lonely football fan.  Every single person who has an interest in football usually has a group of friends that could go to a park or field and have a game of football.  Same goes for something like Tennis, ESPECIALLY if you live in the UK where tennis balls and rackets are cheap as shit.  Just buy some basic equipment, go to a park and play some fucking tennis instead of sitting on your couch doing it.  Something like Hockey might be a little harder, but generally speaking wouldn't it be better to just go and play the real thing rather then shelling out all this money just to play a video game version of something that would be better to do for real?

The other thing about sports games is that they are just a fucking rip off.  Every goddamn year there's a new Fifa or Pro Evolution game and people go fucking nuts for it.  I understand it when Konami releases a new IIDX game every year because there's new music on it and it's an arcade game.  Doesn't matter if it's IIDX 21 or IIDX 22, it's going to cost 100 yen to play.  But are sports games for things like tennis, football, American football, hockey, basketball etc. really that different from game to game?  What do they even fucking change? The rosters to reflect the teams? Who gives a shit?  In my head, what you're paying for when you buy Fifa 15 is Fifa 14 but with a few names changed round and maybe a shitty PS4 controller or Kinect gimmick.

Like I said, I don't think they suck per se, I just don't get them.  I'm sure there must be SOMETHING to these games otherwise companies like EA wouldn't be able to milk them for so much money every year.  Still though, when I see a game getting yearly sequels I roll my eyes, but when sports fans get yearly sequels it's cause for celebration.  What gives?