There are a lot of sports that could be "TV friendly" that just don't air. For example how about Badminton. This event never gets TV time.
As far as chess not being a sport, I could argue that it is a higher level of a certain sport. Let's take football for example. We can all agree that this is truely a sport based. It has players that execute a set of plays with tactics and strategry assigned by a coach. Perhaps we should think of chess players as the coach for the execution of a set of strategies and tactics for their "team." Just because the players aren't real doesn't discredit them from the tasks in which they are assigned. Hence, chess is a sport. As far as non eventful games that probably would never get listed in the olympics try Tic-Tac-Toe. "Well Bob, we can see that these two master Tic Tac Toe players have been on a stalemate for the last three weeks!.. Maybe this will be the deciding game for the best in the world and a gold medal! Here comes the final placements!....Oh another draw..." It should be easy to see the difference in game playing levels.
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There are a lot of sports that could be "TV friendly" that just don't air. For example how about Badminton. This event never gets TV time. As far as chess not being a sport, I could argue that it is a higher level of a certain sport. Let's take football for example. We can all agree that this is truely a sport based. It has players that execute a set of plays with tactics and strategry assigned by a coach. Perhaps we should think of chess players as the coach for the execution of a set of strategies and tactics for their "team." Just because the players aren't real doesn't discredit them from the tasks in which they are assigned. Hence, chess is a sport. As far as non eventful games that probably would never get listed in the olympics try Tic-Tac-Toe. "Well Bob, we can see that these two master Tic Tac Toe players have been on a stalemate for the last three weeks!.. Maybe this will be the deciding game for the best in the world and a gold medal! Here comes the final placements!....Oh another draw..." It should be easy to see the difference in game playing levels.