What is JSON?
The format the web runs on. Nested objects and arrays, real types, and a syntax small enough to fit on a postcard. It maps badly onto a grid, which is why converting deeply nested JSON to a spreadsheet always involves losing something.
What is HTML?
The web's document format, and incidentally a place an enormous amount of tabular data ends up - published tables that were never offered as a download. Pulling those out is usually easier than asking whoever published them for the numbers.