From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsideshowside‧show /ˈsaɪdʃəʊ $ -ʃoʊ/ noun [countable] 1 DLa separate small part of a fair or circus, where you pay to play games or watch a performance2 UNIMPORTANTan event that is much less important or serious than another one The initial conflict was a mere sideshow compared with the World War that followed.
Examples from the Corpus
sideshow• There is even a sideshow where a large gilt stupa rotates on an electric motor.• In a way, the presidential race is a sideshow to the real struggle for power in Washington.• He told me back then that the open space bond was a sideshow.• No longer can Labor and the Likud be seen as the only parties that matter, and the rest as sideshows.• They were heavily barred and on wheels, somewhere between a luggage trolley and a circus sideshow.• And the struggle is more than a mere sideshow on the right.• We saw a movie by Herzog that concluded with a chicken in a Midwest sideshow that played tic-tac-toe.• To be sure, even the great Constitutional Convention had its own sideshows. 