I wonder what the effect on attendance would be, if major sporting events had a "no cell phones" rule. My guess offhand: it would be devastating to ticket sales.
I've been trying to mull that out as well from an economic perspective but I think it's highly dependent on the existing distribution networks which adds additional complexity.
Major League sports information is disseminated fairly quickly and the attendance levels make technological prohibitions a challenge. The nature of world chess championships make it a little different, as long as the globally recognized top ranked players are in attendance (preventing an organizational schism) I think the organizers could do whatever they want.
In the end I think this ruling just means they can't enforce a civil penalty for violation of these rules, but there's no reason they can't expel the violator from their event.
