I concur with Tony on the above points. Emotional involvement is a major contribution regarding all sports, Football being a prime example. The top sports in the World; Football, Boxing, Golf, Formula 1, snooker all have major sponsorship deals, investment, branding and exposure. Martial arts, per se, have been niche sports, regarding mainstream, for decades.
PKA Kickboxing had some major exposure in the USA in the 80's but dried up by the 90's. UFC & K1 have had major investment and marketing and therefore have been succesful in reaching some mainstream audience. However, even though they have been a great success they still fall short of the great pay days of World championship boxing by a long way and it is unlikely they will have the following of football.
Good marketing is definitely the key and of course mainstream exposure (TV, newspapers)
If you read the sports pages of any National paper in the West when do you see a Muay Thai, MMA or Kickboxing bout reported on ( with the exception of Alex Reid). They are still not 'Mainstream' sports. K1 & MMA are our highest paid and most exposed but again not in the echilons of Boxing, Football etc.

In saying all this, there has been improvement in shows and exposure certainly in the last 3 years. Our danger of course is offering too much in the way of different stand up rule sets for generic sports such as MMA, K1, kickboxing etc and therefore diluting what we have. Muay Thai being a niche sport has its own rule set and, like Tony says, this should not change as it works for our sport, it's how we base our strategies and techniques upon. Imagine how football would change strategically if you removed the off side rule or allowed the use of the hands to block a ball.
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