Nowadays it's all about marketing and selling expensive drum equipment. I started gigging jazz professionally way back in 1971 and I used a Ludwig Speed King for the next 20 years on hundreds and hundreds of gigs. Back then you didn't worry so much about your pedal, you just played on it. You either played a Speed King or a Gretsch floating action (depending upon your preference) and often you just played whatever pedal the manufacturer supplied with your new drum kit, be that Rogers, Slingerland, Camco, Ludwig or Gretsch. How well you played depended upon your playing ability and level of technique and drummers didn't worry so much about incremental and relatively minor differences between bass drum pedals, and they certainly didn't go out and spend nearly as much on a pedal as people today might spend on an entire mid-level drum kit. Back in 1970 I bought a new Rogers Holiday model five-piece kit for $850 and that included all hardware and a Rogers pedal. I still have that drumset, although I've refinished it a number of times and upgraded it from the original Swiv-O-Matic to Memri-Loc so it's not vintage.
Back around 1995 I found that I finally began to have more money to spend on drum stuff so I started buying pedals, usually relying upon marketing descriptions and advertisments in Modern Drummer magazine, thinking that somehow having a state-of-the-art and very expensive pedal (and also new drums) would benefit me somehow. I fell right into the regular marketing schtick, hook line and sinker.
Now, after having spent all this money on various expensive drums and equipment, I realize that going out and playing a gig works just as well and is just as satisfying and musical using my old Rogers kit with my Ludwig Speed King as with everything else I own, and just as likely with anything I could possibly buy in the future, regardless of how well marketed or expensive.
The only real exception to this has been the recent addition of a Gilbratar Linear pedal which really is a revolutionary pedal design and actually feels significantly different, and probably better than, any of my other pedals, at least in terms ease of playing and responsiveness. Otherwise, the more things change, the more they stay the same.