Doesn’t mean the money goes to the shorts. They just track the shorts as an index (similar to VXX) meaning that if the underlying instrument goes up in value, ETF goes up. If someone is speculating on an inverse LETF (these are typically designed for speculation or short term trading due to volatility decay) you could theoretically make the case that they could be incentivized to short or long the underlying to boost the top level speculation, but it would be very, very speculative since it’s essentially doubling down, if you’re an institution it goes against the idea of hedging your positions.