Is Battle for a New Champion Being Ruined By Audience Participation?

On the past two episodes of Battle for a New Champion, we saw two of the most dominant elimination competitors appear as mercenaries: Laurel and Cara Maria. Fans were excited to see these returns, but they both lost in The Arena.

It was a bit shocking to see the two champions lose, though the stakes were much lower for them. However, there is one other element that came into play. The contenders, Ravyn and Michele both received help from the audience.

Audience participation is nothing new on The Challenge, but during prior seasons (most notably, Ride or Dies), audience participation was attributed to “social game.” This season is a bit different because the mercenaries have no “social game.” That’s the point of having a mercenary — they arrive to cause chaos and disrupt the status quo. So, nobody in the audience would want to help the mercenary win because it would just mean losing $10,000 from the prize pool and it doesn’t really change the dynamic of the game.

Neither Laurel nor Cara Maria seemed particularly bitter about losing in this fashion. Laurel said she expected the audience to help Rayvn, and of course she did. On Ride or Dies she helped Horacio & Olivia defeat Turbo & Tamara in Memory Lane. So, she knows that audience participation is par for the course at this point.

Flash forward to this season, and Laurel is competing against Ravyn in Chain Reaction, a game with a big memory component. This time, the audience was helping Ravyn memorize her colors, and it allowed Ravyn to get her peg board correct on her first check.

The other team heavily impacted by audience participation on Ride or Dies was Jay & Michele. During Spun Out, a communication-based game, the audience yelled out the placement of Horacio & Olivia’s pieces. Not only did this confuse Jay & Michele, but the loud screams made it difficult for the Survivor duo to communicate. But during Block Heads on Battle for a New Champion, the audience was telling Michele where to place her pieces. We don’t see a lot of this on screen, but Ed made it clear that everyone was helping Michele.

But, as a viewer, watching the audience dictate outcomes is such a buzzkill. Fans were very excited to see Laurel and Cara Maria return, especially because Cara had been gone for so long. The whole purpose of this season is to have the champions come in and disrupt the game. Instead, they’re causing the contenders to unify and work together to protect their prize pool.

It’s hard to know if silencing the audience would have changed the outcome of any of these eliminations — but Horacio & Olivia did seem to be behind their opponents on both of their Ride or Dies eliminations. And you can’t really fault anyone for accepting audience help, especially Michele, who was a victim of the audience in the past. But it does detract from the intent of the game. We want to see people compete, but when competitions permit such lopsided gameplay, there’s no reason to watch.