The Dominance Paradox

Winning too much is bad for business.

So, to clarify… it’s not the winning itself. That sells tickets and shirts and sponsorships in the short run, but the certainty that comes with winning, again and again. A fandom runs on doubt. Take away the doubt and you take away the reason to watch, and most of the people in charge of sports, franchises and brands are spending enormous ammounts of energy trying to manufacture the one thing that kills the intensity they depend on.

Formula 1 gave us the clearest proof of this in years. Max Verstappen and Red Bull turned the 2023 season into a procession, winning 21 of 22 races, and the sport’s own numbers punished them for it. Italian TV viewership fell 32% year on year to its worst average since 2020. In the US, ESPN’s audience slipped despite three American races on the calendar and a Netflix show engineered to pull new fans in. The most telling data wasn’t the ratings though, it was the language. A social analysis by Buzz Radar found F1 mentions down a massive 70% and total reach down 64% across the season, with words like “boring” and “disappointing” climbing while “exciting” and “fun” fell away.

Verstappen was producing one of the great individual seasons in the sport’s history, and fans were reaching for the word “boring” to describe it.

That’s the paradox... The athletic achievement and the audience collapse were part of the same event.

You can watch the mechanism work in reverse, which is more useful for anyone trying to build a fandom rather than just watch one. The 2021 F1 title went to the final lap of the final race, Verstappen against Hamilton, genuinely nobody knew what the outcome would be. There was real tension, real jepordy and a sense that anything could happen, and it produced the biggest audience surge the sport had seen. It was the same drivers, the same cars, and it was the same sport.

The only variable that changed was jeopardy, and jeopardy is the key.