There's a bit of nuance here in that outside IPOs, companies can go public both through either a SPAC or direct listing. However, a SPAC incurs a 20% sponsor fee that the direct listing doesn't, so you imagine that many strong firm would simply balk at the price and opt for the direct listing if they felt bullish enough about their market prospects.
Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare SPACs and traditional IPOs, where there's a middleman taking a cut one way or another. SPACs seem like an inverted IPO to me pioneered in the current rather frothy environment, where there's more capital that wants to go into taking growth tech firms public than there are firms ready to take public, so they pre-allocate the dollar allocation into a blank check firm to streamline the process when a suitable target is found to expedite the process. The advantage here seems to be 1) time preference or 2) ease of taking firms public that otherwise would face challenges in being taken public in more traditional market conditions.
Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare SPACs and traditional IPOs, where there's a middleman taking a cut one way or another. SPACs seem like an inverted IPO to me pioneered in the current rather frothy environment, where there's more capital that wants to go into taking growth tech firms public than there are firms ready to take public, so they pre-allocate the dollar allocation into a blank check firm to streamline the process when a suitable target is found to expedite the process. The advantage here seems to be 1) time preference or 2) ease of taking firms public that otherwise would face challenges in being taken public in more traditional market conditions.