A sporting chance

IN LONDON in April, a 22-year-old Norwegian turned cartwheels by the Thames. Magnus Carlsen, the world’s top-ranked chess player (and a model for G-Star RAW, a fashion firm) had just earned the right to challenge for the World Chess Championship in India next month. His battle against Viswanathan Anand, a 43-year-old Indian and world champion since 2007, is a long-awaited spectacle. Match organisers see a chance to turn a struggling sport into a global brand.

Time was when the world stopped for professional chess. Millions watched Bobby Fischer, an American, beat the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in 1972. In the 1990s a pair of matches between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue, a computer, recaptured some of that suspense. Yet despite booming interest in the amateur game, top-level chess has become obscure again, hobbled by squabbles and eccentric leadership.

Enthusiasts spy a comeback. Last year Andrew Paulson, an American businessman based in London, bought rights to stage the game’s most prestigious contests, including November’s duel. For $500,000 the World Chess Federation (FIDE) granted Mr Paulson media and marketing licences for a decade—and the chance to make chess a profitable enterprise.

The game itself has plenty of fans. Research in five countries by YouGov, a pollster, found that more than two-thirds of adults have played at least once. FIDE says 605m do so regularly. In India, where Mr Anand is a national hero, nearly a third of adults claim to play every week. The internet and smartphones mean novices no longer need a friend to play.

Susan Polgar, a Hungarian-American grandmaster, says about 35 countries include chess in school curricula. FIDE’s membership includes associations in 178 countries, up from 90 or so in the 1970s. This has cut the dominance of professional competitors from Russia and former Soviet states. Hou Yifan, a 19-year-old from China, won the women’s world championship on September 20th. Mr Carlsen (pictured left) could become western Europe’s first world champion since 1937.

But grassroots enthusiasm has not raised the profile of the professional game. Critics gripe about mercurial decision-making within FIDE. The sport’s governing body gets by on some $2m a year (FIFA, football’s federation, spent more than $1 billion in 2012) and has had only two presidents in 31 years. Its boss since 1995 has been Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who also ran Kalmykia, one of Russia’s poorest regions, until 2010. That year Mr Ilyumzhinov said he was once contacted by aliens; in 2011 he played chess with Muammar Qaddafi.

FIDE has a fractious relationship with some national clubs. The English and Georgian chess federations accuse it of mishandling the appointment of several officials in 2010 (in July 2012 a court of arbitration ruled in FIDE’s favour). Earlier squabbles have had long-lasting impact. In the 1990s Mr Kasparov and Britain’s Nigel Short created a parallel professional circuit. The schism lingered until 2006.

A deeper challenge is that watching chess is less fun than playing it. A single game can last six hours; its most riveting moment may be a strategic nuance known as the Yugoslav variation on the Sicilian. “Good chess leads to draws,” says Maurice Ashley, an American grandmaster.

Mr Ashley believes that new game and tournament formats could attract a wider audience. Competitors in blitz chess must finish their games in half an hour. Matches lasting minutes make popular footage online. Yet many players resist fast games, arguing that they reward low-quality chess. FIDE’s enthusiasm for shorter championships in the 1990s and 2000s prolonged the professional game’s split.

Lengthy duels could still flourish if packaged well. Golf’s slow pace does not stop big audiences following four-day tournaments; in the cricket-playing world, witty commentary keeps fans tuned to games that last five days. Lately ESPN, a broadcaster, has turned poker, spelling bees and Frisbee-flinging (see article) into tense, dramatic television.

Mr Paulson, who made a fortune in Russian internet ventures, says chess matches can make “heart-gripping, heart-pounding entertainment”. (He is standing for president of the English Chess Federation on October 12th.) He plans more competitions in big cities beyond Russia and eastern Europe, where many now take place. In March he launched ChessCasting, a web application that offers statistics and commentary on big events as well as discussion boards for amateur pundits. He talks of reporting competitors’ sweating, eye movement and heart rate.

Chess needs deep-pocketed backers to complete this transformation. Mr Paulson thinks firms will want to associate with a game that is “clean, pure and meritocratic”. But he has not yet announced any big new sponsors. “One mistake has been assuming it would be easier,” he says. A cartwheeling world champion might help.