Chess.com has announced the format for their upcoming 2023 Chess Champions Tour. The series will have a record-breaking $2 million prize pool, split among six tournaments. As usual, the tournaments will gather the best chess players in the world, and in order to "maximize excitement and make every match count" a new format was implemented. The tournaments will now have open qualifiers, a play-in stage, and a knockout stage. In the knockout stage, 56 players will compete for the trophy, and for automatic seeding in the next event knockout stage.
The Airthings Masters starts on February 3rd and will kick off the 2023 season. Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest is excited about the start of the upcoming season, and had the following to say about the Airthings Masters:
"This is a new beginning for the chess world online. What we are seeing here is the two great tournaments from last year coming together to form the biggest online chess event in history."
Viewership comparison of the 2022 Chess Champions Tour
Last year's tour was very successful, with tournaments reaching good viewership numbers. The Airthings Masters was the most popular event of the circuit, with 88K viewers coming together to watch day one of the grand finals between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi. The Julius Baer Generation Cup was the most-watched event, as viewers watched the competition for an astonishing 1.3 million hours. It was able to reach a wide audience, providing fans with great matches, and memorable moments.
Fans know that if they want to watch high-level chess, they need to tune into the 2023 Chess Champions Tour events. Legendary players such as Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and many others, are a constant presence at the competitions, which attracts the interest of worldwide viewers. The introduction of open qualifiers gives unknown players a chance to make a name for themselves, and we might even see some cinderella stories. It’s something that would certainly make the tournaments more interesting since everyone loves a good underdog story.
Many big brands such as Meltwater, PUMA, Airthings, and Mastercard, sponsor the tour, which further proves how big of an audience the events are able to reach. It also highlights the great work done by Chess.com in the past years. The company became the lead online platform in the chess world, and has contributed immensely to the game's player and viewership base growth.
As mentioned above, the chess community has been steadily growing in the past few years, and having more events where fans can see top-tier players facing each other, has been one of the big reasons why. Since this year's tour has a record-breaking $2 million prize pool, we expect some very exciting games, which will captivate the attention of many viewers. The 2023 Chess Champions Tour has all the ingredients to be a success, and will certainly provide viewers with memorable moments.
