Playing devil's advocate here - Perhaps they always envisioned...

Playing devil's advocate here -

Perhaps they always envisioned (and hoped) that they will get significant downloads from the social media reach that they have and that they don’t really have a large budget set aside for fans acquisition– Basically the finals are meant to be the money rounds (as prizes are up for grabs on each finals week – possibly linked to fan activities like downloads, shares etc). Finals are also meant to be elimination rounds (as long as you are in the top 150 you were safe in the heat and really not competing with others – basically small pools of entrants in each heat and a larger % of people who get through). Whereas, in the finals, out of 1000, 750 will be eliminated straight away in 1 week. This requires more call to action, more votes, more following and more support. At the moment the Heat A winners have disappeared waiting to come back when the finals start so in essence the app isn’t really engaging all it's users that much. So with all this in mind, maybe (just maybe) the plan (and hope) is that the social media reach through performer will do the magic and that they don't really have a large user acquisition marketing budget.

That to me is one reason to leave it until the grand finale week as there will only be 10 people competing and the social reach of 10 people will be much smaller than the social reach of 1000 people and they want to amplify that with paid acquisition. Also, as an independent user promoted to download the app via paid acquisition (not a fan of a particular performer), it will be easier to follow (and judge) who in 10 deserves to win compared to having to skim through 1000 finding talent.

I think this strategy (if it is what it is) works fine, but just not sure about giving the end user 1-2 weeks to know about Megastar, Understand how it has worked so far, Who the competitors are and what walks in life they have come from, how they have travelled throughout the competition to be able to JUDGE who deserves the crown. Even traditional shows like Xfactor and AGTs run over many weeks post the audition phase – I thought the real value was in the finals rounds but clearly they are keeping in short.

In regards to your comment regarding building up the hype - if anything there is likely going to be a longer lead time between competitions than between heats and finale. It would make more sense to peak the virality throughout the competition followed by troughs between competitions etc.

Wish someone had asked this question to the management at TechInvest - I think I raised this earlier too but this is something that I can curiously looking forward to - how the product takes shape post competition.