Why are matchmakers so scammy?

Did you see that indian matchmaking show? The matchmaker would consistently complain that the women's standards were too high and would coerce them to accept dates from guys faaar beneath them. These were super hot career women who made tons of money and she kept setting them up with guys who probably made around the same as them but looked like soft potatoes. Sure enough the guys didn't act as grateful as they should've been to be dating women soooo out of their leagues too.

Using capitalist principles to try and produce an authentic relationship based on love and mutual respect will usually fail.

Also as @hush pointed out, women will be the ones who are advised to lower their standards.

Women are not commodities. Dating services - because we live in a patriarchy - commoditize women. The mere fact of being there, whether it's a matchmaking service or on OLD, is a bit like saying "put me in your catalog for men to browse through while sitting on the toilet." It's a scam and a bad deal for women.

Matchmakers are scammy because patriarchy allows them to get away with telling a woman to lower her standards, while hardly ever being able to convince a man to lower his.

An even halfway attractive and decent man looking for a relationship will easily find one and therefore has no need for a matchmaker. As long as he is looking for a woman in his league, no decent man will have to resort to matchmakers.

The matchmakers get the bottom of the barrel scrotes willing to pay money to have a stranger convince some desperate woman who would have been way out of their league otherwise to lower her standards far enough to date them. A matchmaker is not interested in producing happy couples at the first try. Why on earth would they? Happy couples don't pay them. Happy couples don't stay in their meat catalogue. Desperate singles do and they keep paying if they manage to feed them scraps in the form of "Oh I have so many other attractive singles who want to meet you" long enough.

This is also the reason why I hate working with recruiters.

This reminds me of the episode of The Golden Girls where Sophia hires a matchmaker for Dorothy, and when Sophia says yes, a criminal record does indeed matter, the matchmaker says “Okay, but you just cut her chances in half.”

Meant to be a joke of course, but is it really?

There are only very few men who want a relationship so it's like the inverse of dating apps. The men who are serious enough to pay a matchmaker have their pick of women.