DECEMBER 8, 2009
Chess Wants Sponsors as Mates
In an age when niche sports such as darts and poker have managed to attract a mainstream following, chess fans are wondering why there has been so little attention devoted to the London Chess Classic, which begins today and has been billed as the strongest tournament in the U.K. in 25 years.
Sellout crowds are expected across the five days at the Kensington Olympia, while more than a million enthusiasts will follow the tournament online, with six-figure audiences expected to follow for the much-anticipated showdown between former world champion Vladimir Kramnik and newly crowned world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, a 19-year-old Norweigan whose prodigious talents have seen him hailed as the Mozart of chess.
The meeting of a giant of the sport’s past and its leading light of the future has generated serious buzz in online forums world-wide, but it has so far failed to generate big money.
Although a group of private investors has agreed to sponsor the London Chess Classic, the purse of €100,000 ($148,520)—a record for a British tournament—is indicative of the sport’s struggle to translate its popularity into cash.
Corporate sponsorship has proved elusive, while lucrative endorsement deals are rare, even for the sport’s leading stars. Last year, Mr. Carlsen spent 200 days on the road playing and earned roughly $250,000 after expenses, his father says.
Those earnings will increase following his rise to the top of the rankings, but even for the world’s leading player, it is clear chess can’t compete with the riches on offer in mainstream sports. Even more galling for chess organizers, it now fails to generate the revenues of other “mind sports.”
While the winner of this month’s World Chess Cup will receive $120,000 in prize money, this year’s World Series of Poker champion pocketed about $8.5 million.
“Chess has simply failed to tap into its enormous potential: We have too many people shooting ourselves in the foot, or in the head if you like, and we’re not enough progressive enough as a sport,” says Nigel Short, a former world championship challenger and current British No. 1.
He blames the International Chess Federation, known by its French acronym FIDE, for failing to leverage the sport’s enormous global reach. With 158 member nations, FIDE is the second largest world-wide sporting organization after FIFA, the governing body of world football.
“At the grassroots level, chess is huge but on the top level it doesn’t translate into anything,” Mr. Short says. “There are hundreds of millions of chess players around the world, so the money’s there, but FIDE has failed to put chess in the mainstream.”
Here is the full article.
Go is very popular in East Asia and players of Go can earn big money. Go is a also very slow game like chess. Can we borrow something here?
My guess:
1) No draw allowed in Chess.
2) More international tournaments.
…
The mafia cannot make money betting with chess like it does poker and billiards. If chess were made more mysterious and marketed for illegal gambling, then people would like to bet on it. It’s all about illegal gambling!
Draws are a necessity, but Sofia rules could solve the issue there.
International tournaments are not the answer either.
You need more media exposure. Media exposure == sponsors. Sponsors mean more money, more money attracts attention and gets media exposure.
Everyone who loves chess should embrace it, get a t-shirt, create a viral campaign. There are a lot of smart and educated chess players in various fields and industries.
I noticed countless media releases about upcoming Chess London Classic. They’re doing it right. Although redundant it gets some exposure. Why can’t we write them for local and national tournaments?
How about US Chess Federation investing some money in adverting, not frivolous political lawsuits?
Advertisement like t-shirts is NOT the way to go. The sport has to advertise itself by actions.
As a neutral viewer of chess, these are my “wrongs” of the game, and which hold its potential down:
a) There should be official tournaments where everyone (top 50?) are forced to participate. Big prizemoney for the overall winner, and the roundwinner. Look at Formula one, skiing, etc. Cities bid to be a offical host of tournament city. 10 times a year?
b) Clear rules of the world championship. Its a disaster the way it is now. Nobody know when, where, how, why…
c) Clear rules of the offical games. That means the same amount of time etc. and those rules don’t change from tournament to tournament. I do not know how many times i have asked at a chess forum what happens if two players have the same amount of points at the end of a tournament, and NOONE can answer. They don’t know. Sometimes its the quality, sometimes its internal matches etc.
d) Sofia rules won’t change a thing IMO. On top level the amount of draws is still too high. There was massive protest of introducing 3 points in soccer many years ago. Look now; how many are against?
We want winners, not drawers.
By setting 3 point, the aggressive players can dare to take risk.
e) Offical cups. People loves cups. That is a tournament where draws not possible, and only the winners stay.
f) when there is a good structure of tournaments etc, then the marketing can start. Focus on the Titans; Carlsen, Kramnik, Anand.
But there are a lot of other players who has a lot of marketing strength, which neutral viewers don’t know about.
Chess will not make it into the “mainstream” for the simple reason that it’s not a spectator game. As only a very, very small percentage of the popluation can follow the game. And, up to a point, only Grandmasters can fully under stand a position. The way the game is covered and explained needs to be worked on, to make the game better understood. This is not so in poker or darts.