Grand Master Maurice Ashley recently asked in a facebook post, what can be done to make Chess dramatically more exciting to the audience and followers, not only to players? As he is working with MIT Lab on this, his plan is to implement some of those in the upcoming Millionaire Chess Tournament at Las Vegas this October.

Being a chess player, commentator, parent / audience I have thought many things at different times around this. Here are some that are coming to my mind. I think point#12 below, bringing chess statistics in front of general audience is the most important of this bunch.

1. Chess players and their parents should be able to know each round's pairing real-time (as soon as the paring is done). This can be easily done by posting the pairing not only on a physical wall or tournament board but also online at tournament website as well as texted/emailed to the participants and tweeted to through a specific hashtag for an event. This will be very convenient for the players and equally convenient for the audience who can quickly check the pairings or board numbers of their favorite players as well as current standings.
2. Let the audience watch the games live. Traditionally we have been using standing boards and now-a-days big tournaments arrange DGT boards or e-boards. These should also be broadcasted online, like Monroi does through its server.
3. Let the audience guess the moves that are going to be played over the board shortly on the games that they are following. If the audience can watch the game real-time, they will often make attempt to guess moves at each step of the games that they are following. Just make it more fun by recognizing the top number of correct guesses from the audience and give some incentive for it probably in the form of a token prize.
4. Let the audience share and participate on discussions or chats about particular games or about the whole tournament at real-time amongst themselves. This is similar to live chat comments by the players that we see in online broadcasted tournaments. The audience will get a common interest group. For example, ask the audience to vote on what was the winner's playing style on board#1 that matches with a world chess champion of present or past? Does his game resembled Capablanca's style or Tal's? Find a similar game or move from history.
5. Announce best game of the day in each sections. Probably pick 5 from each sections and let the audience vote, so by next morning you have winners.
6. Let the top players spend some time after the game in question & answer sessions with audience and journalists.
7. Use live commentators on top boards who should be able to take questions from audience sitting in front of them as well as from email, sms, tweets or chat. The commentators should not only be giving oral description of the games but also should be updating the tournament events page or tweeting the info.
8. Introduce the star fobia on audience in each sections. Bounty and Bounty Hunter concept of Millionaire Chess will be very effective in this regard.
9. Use state flags or country flags for each top players in every section (if not all players) in their tables. This way audience will start supporting players whom they don't know, only based on the flags that they carry. 
10. Make player profiles available in the tournament web site for all higher rated chess players.
11. Cheerleaders
12. Bring Chess Statistics in front of the audience. This may make a great leap on chess followings by general audience. Here are some examples -

• Player X in Under 2200 section was undefeated for last 10 games 
• Player Y didn't draw a single game as black in year 2013 onwards
• Similar to what we say in Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar has made 100 centuries in international cricket or Roger Federer won 17 Grand Slams in tennis. So we can say Nakamura won 53 classical chess games (a fictitious number I just made up) in Kings Indian Defence, highest amongst the contemporary chess players who are rated at least 2400 or above.
• This exact position in Game Z has occurred 135 times in the past according to ChessBase or this typical combination has been carried out 37 times in the past according to ChessBase.

 

Source: My Entry from Dragon Bishop Blog

If Eurosport (large european sportnetwork for those outside) can broadcast countless hours of snooker, then I fail to why speed chess shouldn't be possible to attract a fair following.

Given good commentators (like Maurice Ashley as I understand), or Jesper Hall or Ulf Andersson over here in Sweden, with proper backup and possibly way to email, text or tweet comments and questions to the commentators ...

Classic chess might be too long and slow, but speed chess (like < 1 hour games) would be perfect in this format.

Short of the perfect commentator who is a former world class player, can talk for hours and keep your attention because he is flat interesting and funny, and who can simultaneously operate a computer to assist with figuring out the plan and explaining the analysis real time, the only answer is vice. Since this perfect commentator is likely to either not exist or already making millions of dollars per year, the only answers are: cheerleaders, beer, and gambling. If there was a league format, with franchises and a full season that people could follow and place bets on, it might have a chance. The risk of players throwing games goes through the roof, but it's no different than tennis.

                      I have the perfect idea.  Hook it to NASCAR. Make it mandatory that ALL drivers must play. Then when The Daytona 500 reaches the half-way mark, ALL drivers run to the infield, play 1 game, then run back to their cars to finish the race       GENIUS!        Wait a minute; that may not work. The drivers will get confused when their spotters start saying, "f3 is open on the high line, put that bishop into the wall".

All these idea's seem good and would increase popularity.

This may work for some people, but for me watching a top level chess match is already more exciting than watching cars go around an oval track.

Instead of using the clock, take a sip after you have moved a piece. The game should end when all the beer in the glasses has been emptied.

What about connecting with famous guys in the game to be invited to encourage the new coming ?

I disagree.  Snooker has a wider appeal because the rules and premise of the game are simpler to understand, and those watching can recognise the skill involved.

For a wide audience to truly appeciate chess, it needs to either be regular time controls, with excellent commentators to help them appeciate the level of depth involved, or it needs to be a highlights show with excellent post-game analysis.

Speed chess, while it seems like it has far more action, will actually have less engagement with uneducated/new players, because it will be even harder to follow.  You might as well show them a blitz game of tiddly-winks.

Personally, I prefer watching blitz/bullet online, because I play it and can reasonably relate to it.  But if you want to broaden the appeal and connect with a wider audience, you first need to make the game easier to understand, not more complex.

At the end of the day, people are not going to sit down to watch either...  live chess has a limited appeal.  Even when I do watch it, I am usually doing something else at the same time, and only sporadically engaging with what is happening.

Alekhine lost to Euwe, an amateur then, due to drinking beer.

And Clock is to take care of time in game, not no. of moves.

Finally, there are people who can work a glass for 100 moves, so it won't be equal

        Without having read through the posts above, one can immediately give an answer to the question. Chess itself cannot possibly be exciting in the way that a good spectator sport or game might be. It can be interesting, engrossing, tense, engaging, even upsetting, but not exciting. No board game could be. 

You can't. I couldn't get exited about Magic the Gathering no matter how much they spice it up, because I don't understand it.

Why not focus on giving a better product to chess fans rather than fail to try to appeal to people who have no interest?

That was probably a really exciting fight until they started playing chess. 

How To Make Chess Exciting to Audience

Well that would be an exercise in total futility.  

Unless of course it is only men in the audience in which event you need practically nothing to get them excited..........

Go back to Roman times.... Loser dies. Contestants would be the next problem however...

Sharp eye Monseiur! But methinks they'll be too drunk to care.

@cornbeefhashvili: Is that Twilight?

gg where have you been?