And who is your target audience? I mean I love the game, but who would watch an hour of chess on tv? The biggest reason it isn't more popular is because you have to be pretty familiar with the game to follow it, and it is kind of complicated.
Why Chess Not Major Like Others Professional Sports
Sort:
Chess was on the news in my area,
because theres like a major chess tournament and they were saying stuff about it..
pretty cool :P
Aug 3, 2009
0
#44
Kramnik put it pretty well.
"Making chess into a sport has no future, because the game is too complicated for spectators. In order to enjoy it, a spectator would have to have a rating of at least 1700"
I can quibble with the 1700 number, but the point remains that you have to be well beyond beginner to appreciate watching the game. This is not the case with basketball, football, baseball, cricket, american football, hockey, volleyball, etc.
By the way, I just read the post that was just above my last post--didn't read the whole 3 pages of posts before posting as I need to get to bed soon, but I suspect that a chess cable network as I described would have a chance of success (although I am certainly less of an expert than Rob_Soul), IF it were worldwide. There are enough chess fans in Europe (and especially in eastern Europe and the rest of the former Soviet Union), and probably enough fans of particular chess players in certain countries from which they come (remember how the Fischer-Spassky match was news here in the US?), that such a channel might work, if done on an international level (using programming like I suggested, any "variety shows" being of the sort that would be respectable, such as documentaries on the cities and regions that host major chess events, the histories of players and events, similar to the material that NBC aired about Michael Phelps's background, the city of Beijing, etc. during the Beijing Olympics).
I ultimately digress to Rob_Soul as he clearly has put more thought and expertise into this than I have.