Loyalty collapses the moment a valid competitor appears.

observation — attributed to Marco Giberti

The audiences that big horizontal shows assume are loyal are not loyal. They are inertial. The first credible vertical alternative pulls them away faster than the incumbent's planning cycle can react. The reason most incumbents do not see it coming is that inertia reads as loyalty for years until the moment it stops reading as anything, and by then the audience is in a different room.

For incumbent organizers reading their own attendance data as a signal of strength when it may be a signal of structural exposure.

audience-loyalty, competitive-dynamics, inertia, market-share, incumbent-risk