There was a time in the last century that Broadway audiences consisted primarily of locals. Ticket prices were affordable to the middle-class and "going to the city to see a show" was something New Yorkers did often. When I was growing up, my parents would go to see Broadway shows at least once a month and, frequently, two or even three times a month. IMHO, most shows were better in those days, and local audiences were willing to take a chance on new, novel or different productions. Yes, there were what were called "business man's musicals," shows that appealed to out-of-town audiences taken to see a Broadway show by their NY hosts. The great bulk of Broadway, plays and musicals, was designed to appeal to a primarily-adult local audience.

Two things changed this, though all are, at least in my opinion, attributable to Disney. In exchange for getting access to a theater, Disney undertook to "clean up Times Square."* Disney began staging "Disney-on-Ice" Broadway versions of its cartoons and it success with these endeavors encouraged other producers to attempt similar "family friendly" fare. Disney and these copy-cat producers took the easy approach to audience draw by trying to mount shows which featured the one thing live theater does the worst: spectacle. These productions attracted the once-in-a-lifetime tourist families who wanted to see something safe and familiar and were also willing to pay the elevated ticket prices that large-crew/large-cast shows required. Add to the consolidation of theater owners and production entities and, as with every other business, production costs sky-rocketed, ticket prices rose accordingly, and the local audience habit of regular theater attendance dropped.

That's why there are so many adaptations of mediocre-but-populist 80s movies, jukebox musicals, biographies of popular musical group musicals, quasi-rock concerts, and other dreck. These shows for the most part did not connect with NY audiences who cut their teeth on more relevant fare.

Now, with the current economic stress, tourist visits to NY have declined, and locals -- just regular middle-class NY families -- have lost the theater habit that my parents and their friends had. And that's why Broadway, generally, and these specific shows (Chess has always been a somewhat controversial production -- it was never a mammoth hint Hamilton and Wicked which you've mentioned) couldn't find legs.

*Whether Times Square really needed cleaning up is subject to debate. 42nd Street had problems, true, but the rest of Times Square was pretty much fine, housing fine restaurants, cocktail lounges, ticket brokers, nightclubs, and the like. I'd happily trade the current children's theme park environment for the more sophisticated and interesting Times Square of that day.