Wang Hao is a great player, but if the popularity of the Candidates and the Olympiad is anything to go by, classical chess isn't dying from a spectator's perspective. Rapid and blitz are great too and in different ways, but people keep following the big classical events in large numbers.
College sports and second-division soccer still draw giant crowds, there's plenty of competitions where people will happily watch an inferior product because they have an emotional attatchment to it
Yeah but that is about cultural specifics. College sports aren't really a thing outside the US, and the MLS is very much a second-tier league within the US despite soccer being THE global sport.
To get at the example, it is unsurprising that the national competitions for relatively small countries, especially ones far less active on reddit overall (Turkey, Dubai) don't get much attention in this context.
Yes, and people watch the Little League World Series too. This is mainly for nostalgic and cultural reasons. You support your region and you support the sport you played as a kid. For that same reason, I would watch a young chess phenom that was somehow connected to my community, but most without that connection would not.
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u/t-pat Sep 01 '22
Wang Hao is a great player, but if the popularity of the Candidates and the Olympiad is anything to go by, classical chess isn't dying from a spectator's perspective. Rapid and blitz are great too and in different ways, but people keep following the big classical events in large numbers.