It's certainly a contest for some groups, but I can't say what percentage that would be. There's many many groups that aren't even remotely competitive and for some groups it's primarily a social event.
When we participated with W6YL, we had our own tent, food, and mass quantities of beer. Aside from folks stopping by the tent out of curiosity, it was not a social event at all.
One guy who was a master CW operator wanted to see how the satellite worked. We hooked his keyer up to the 70cm transmitter and let him go at it. At first, hearing his own signal after a 250 millisecond delay confused him a little but I turned the receive audio down to help him out.
When we participated with W6YL, we had our own tent, food, and mass quantities of beer. Aside from folks stopping by the tent out of curiosity, it was not a social event at all.
One guy who was a master CW operator wanted to see how the satellite worked. We hooked his keyer up to the 70cm transmitter and let him go at it. At first, hearing his own signal after a 250 millisecond delay confused him a little but I turned the receive audio down to help him out.