Crowded at the top
The pleasure of a promotion race is the number of clubs involved. A title race usually narrows to two by March; a promotion race can still have six sides within a few points in April, each of them capable of collapsing, and the permutations on the final day are genuinely hard to hold in your head. That is what makes a last weekend feel like an event rather than a coronation.
It helps that nobody in the race is a favourite by wealth alone. Most of these clubs are similar enough that form, injuries and nerve decide the outcome, which is a better contest than one settled by squad depth in October.
The stakes are not symbolic
A title is prestige and prize money for clubs that already have both. Promotion is a different order of consequence: broadcast income, contracts, the ability to keep a squad together, sometimes the club's medium-term solvency. When you watch a side defending a lead in the ninetieth minute of a decisive fixture, you are watching people whose working lives change with the result.
Add a play-off and it gets crueller still, because a season of consistency can end in two legs. Cruelty is not a virtue, but it is undeniably compelling.