On Saturday, Magnus Carlsen, a 22-year-old Norwegian, and Viswanathan Anand, a 43-year-old Indian, will stride to the center of a stage in a hotel in Chennai, India, shake hands and sit down at a chess board to begin a match for the world championship title.

At stake is more than the roughly $2.5 million in prize money. In many ways, the future direction of the game is on the line.

Mr. Carlsen, the world’s top-ranked player, is a rock star in the chess world. He models for the clothing company G-Star Raw and has appeared on “Charlie Rose,” “60 Minutes” and “The Colbert Report.” Mr. Anand, the reigning world champion, is a celebrity in his home country. But his star power pretty much stops at India’s border.

Despite a record number of chess players worldwide, the game has lost the spotlight it basked in when Bobby Fischer, an American, defeated Boris Spassky, a Russian, to claim the world championship title in the international sensation known as the Match of the Century in 1972. Chess enthusiasts say the game needs another big personality to energize it, and they are pinning their hopes on Mr. Carlsen.