Imo most casual players want to be rewarded with good results but with minimal effort put in. As you climb the ladder in sport mode you have to spend more and more time practicing or else you don’t stand a chance to even finish in the top 10 in a race.
I’ve noticed that once you get above 35-40k dr, thats when you start racing the more serious players. Most people just don’t want to put in the time or effort to get to that level.
That's got nothing to do with not liking match making though.
Imagine a scenario with no match making at all, as a casual player you're as likely to end up with a spread of players both much better and much worse - you're likely to be up against players that are literally seconds per lap faster, the casual is simply not going to beat them. With perfect match making, you'd be on a grid with people whose pace is basically the same as yours.
I'd say, in that scenario even a 'casual' player will prefer the latter because it's going to feel like they've got a better chance of winning more of the time. The easy-reward you think they're chasing is no more achievable without match making, it's probably harder.
What you're effectively saying, is that to enjoy sport mode you need to git gud, and you're right, looking at the stats indicates that the vast majority of GT Sport buyers are not interested in getting
that good. Kudos prime indicates only a small fraction of players are in the DR range you're talking about. But effectively, if you need to be in (pretty much) the Elite to enjoy it, then how many people are
really "Missing out" by not going online, I'd suggest not really
that many, because most wont be good enough enough.
I've been playing GT for 20 years. I've bought consoles just for it, I've bought 3 wheels over the years, I've invested a lot of time (and money) on most aspects of the game, I'm not a 'casual', but I'm also not really getting any better - so where does that leave people like me? 20 years appreciation for the game, and a **** online experience... great - think I'll give it a miss.