What might save FIDE, or at least keep it relevant, is if Ding being in the championship now can do for chess in China what Fischer did for chess in the US, or

What might save FIDE, or at least keep it relevant, is if Ding being in the championship now can do for chess in China what Fischer did for chess in the US, or Anand for India. There's a potential huge market and player base that so far hasn't been very interested in international Chess (xiangqi and go are more popular). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China On the other hand, this may be an inflection point toward online chess and faster time formats taking over for deciding who the "real" chess champion is. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with the battle between chess.com and lichess.org for online mindshare.