Companies try to maximize green per red. By paying less, and getting the same, they maximize that, year after year until (in a temporary and unforeseeable setback) you leave for… Bluer pastures, apparently.
There are different sorts of companies, and the more they think of employees as a number of years of experience plus a stack of skills, the more susceptible they are to believing that replacing humans with other equally skilled humans is a productive way to spend their time.
When I was in college, our sportsball team won a game against the other guy’s sportsball team by not many points. Many hundreds of students started a chant going out of the sportsball arena, and four freshmen decided to light a couch on fire, apparently thinking they’d just blend in. The police were there immediately, firefighters put out the couch in a few minutes, and they all got hit with fines.
In short, I think you’re exactly right, and most sportsball fans just want to be loud and drink.