> Crockford's persistence in evangelizing it even after the company he worked at when it was created went bankrupt led to its eventual adoption.

I don't think this is true at all. The reason that JSON won is stated quite clearly in the interview: you do not need a software stack to handle JSON. This feature sells itself for any software development team who needs to have frontends running in a browser consuming data from a backend. You do not need an evangelist to convince people to use a feature that is ubiquitous, free, extensively tested, and more performance than anything in the market.