Now global spectators can follow matches live (for a $7 fee, payable to the murky organisation which owns chess rights, Agon) and can feed each move into powerful chess programs.
The simple action of staging a range of competitions in Country A as opposed to Country B is only relevant if it entertains global spectators or facilitates the business of sports.
Popular interest in bullfighting, once regular village entertainment in South Korea, has waned in recent decades, a victim of television, the Internet and more-global spectator sports, like soccer and baseball.
But still beyond confusing contrasts or apparent order, a lot of energy fields crossing each other, a global encounter, many spectators and many actors from diverse roots, a wide potential of perspective, of future or remembrance, of universal creation".
Pro-gaming is now gaining global traction as a spectator sport: tickets for last year's International Dota 2 tournament at Seattle's Key Arena sold out in an hour.
Smith and Carlos, for their part, brought politics into the very heart of a playful festival and reminded spectators that global events like the Olympics always intersect with, and shape, the social and political contexts in which they occur.
Interspersed with these dramatic scenes was the now iconic photo of the late Osama Bin Laden watching television from his "man cave" in Pakistan, still a significant global figure but increasingly a spectator forced to react to agendas set in other places by other players.
However, the directors currently involved in Iranian cinema have set their sights not only on the domestic audience but also on international spectators and the global box-office.
If all goes as planned, the robotic suit will spring to life in front of almost 70,000 spectators and a global audience of billions of people.
