The AI Cup 2023 was the sixth and final instalment of the regular season of the Champions Chess Tour 2023. The tour still has the Semi-Finals and Finals events to hold with $500K each up-for-grabs, but the AI Cup was the final $235K event of the main season.
Of the five events held this year prior to the AI Cup, Magnus Carlsen was able to win three of the events, with Hikaru Nakamura and Nodirbek Abdusattorov victorious at the Chessable Masters and ChessKid Cup events, respectively. Magnus was on his way to winning a majority of the events in the CCT but came face to face with a serious roadblock: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. How exactly did the event turn out and produce this result?
AI Cup recap and viewership statistics
The Cup was held in September 2023, featuring Open Qualifiers for all non-Grandmasters to qualify, before advancing to a Play-In stage which is open to all Grandmasters. The top players of the Play-In advance to a Knockout Stage, which is held over five days and divided into three divisions.
The Playoffs Knockout Stage of the event saw Magnus Carlsen face off against rival Hikaru Nakamura in the first round of the upper bracket, and Magnus ultimately emerged victorious with a 2½ score against Hikaru’s ½. Magnus continued through the upper bracket until he reached the Champion Final, the winner’s bracket final of the event. Here, Magnus faced off against French Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and managed to defeat the Frenchman 3 to 2.
Maxime crawled his way back from the lower bracket and once again met Magnus in the Grand Finals. In the Grand Finals, Maxime was able to score a 2½ to 1½ victory over Magnus, securing a bracket reset and both players advanced to the final set of the event. Maxime ultimately defeated Magnus 2 to 0, a decisively strong victory against one of the strongest chess players to ever live.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave secured a first-place finish in one of the CCT 2023 events, and apart from the cash prize he also received 150 points in the CCT Standings. The 150 points saw Maxime skyrocket through the standings to a tied sixth place, meaning he will play in the Semi-Finals Playoffs event later this year.
With Magnus losing to Maxime 0-2 and Hikaru being eliminated from the double-elimination Playoffs in two swift matches, the hype for this event must have been high, so how did the event perform in terms of viewership?
Throughout the over 30 hours of broadcasting time for the event, the AI Cup 2023 received 1.4M hours of watch time. In comparison to other Chess Champions Tour events of the year, it outperformed the ChessKid Cup, which received 625K Hours Watched, but fell short of the Airthings Masters 2023 event, which amassed 2M Hours Watched.
The Peak Viewers of 107K concurrently spectating fans was achieved during the final match between Magnus and Maxime, and this peak viewership was heavily supported by community casters. Non-official broadcasts were a substantial part of the cup’s viewership, and many well-known chess creators contributed to the success of the event.
Raffael Chess and Crestbook are two major players in the chess content creation scene, and they both supplied commentary and coverage of the event for their Portuguese and Russian-speaking fans, respectively. In fact, even players at the event were supporting the viewership of the tournament, both Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura had their live-streaming channels go live to give their fans a place to watch the event.
However, despite the community support the event received, viewership for the AI Cup 2023 was purely middle of the road. Compared to other Champions Chess Tour events for 2023, the event ranked 3rd or 4th in most major analytical metrics: Hours Watched, Peak Viewers, and Average Viewers.
One explanation may be fan burn-out as viewership for a series of events like the CCT usually drops off slightly as the tour continues. As the final event of the season, the AI Cup’s Hours Watched and Average Viewers figures are the highest the tour has seen since April of this year. The most successful CCT event of the year in terms of viewership so far was the Airthings Masters 2023, which was the kick-off event for the 2023 CCT.
Although viewership was generally on a down for the latter half of 2023, the AI Cup was able to rejuvenate the event series and bring some life back to the CCT. The AI Cup 2023 was not the most successful event of the year in terms of watch time or peak viewership, however, the event’s uptick in viewership compared to other events later in the year shows the potential the CCT still has to offer.
Viewership comparison of the 2023 CCT season to the 2022 season
As seen in the graphic, the 2023 CCT produced strong viewership results all the way until the final event of the regular season, but how did this compare to last year’s circuit? The 2023 CCT features an entirely new format, thanks to Chess.com’s acquisition of the Play Magnus Group. However, some events remained in the tour amidst the changes, such as the Julius Baer Generation Cup, Aimchess Rapid, Airthings Masters, and Chessable Masters.
Of these events which remain, viewership has largely increased for the CCT in 2023. The Airthings Masters event received over 700K more hours of watch time, and the Peak Viewers of the event exploded from 88K in 2022 to 171K in 2023. The Chessable Masters event experienced a similar large growth in viewership, whereas the Aimchess Rapid event was roughly stable in terms of viewership.
The only event that remained for the 2023 season to see a drop in viewership was the Julius Baer Generation Cup. The cup received 9K fewer Average Viewers in 2023 than the previous year, but the Peak Viewers figure did grow by 39%. Although fewer viewers were watching the cup on average, the potential audience of these events seems to have grown for 2023.
In summary, the 2023 Champions Chess Tour has benefited from a brand-new and condensed event format. The amount of events was reduced from 9 to 6 for 2023, but less isn’t always worse. Despite hosting fewer events in 2023, CCT has already reached 92% of the total watch time achieved in 2022. Don’t forget, this year’s circuit still has the Semi-Finals and Finals stage of the playoffs to come. These events will likely be some of the most-watched events of the entire CCT for 2023, so expect it to have completely outshone the 2022 tour by the end of the year.
The two playoff events of the Champions Chess Tour will be held this December. The Semi-Finals event will run from December 4th to 12th, and the Finals from the 15th to the 22nd. Both of these playoff events will have $500K up-for-grabs, something that will surely incentivise all Grandmasters to bring their best game to the events.
Magnus Carlsen currently leads the standings of the CCT, with 300 points more than Fabiano Caruana and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who are currently tied for second place. As it stands, these are the remaining Chess titans who have qualified for playoffs: Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Denis Lazavik.
The Champions Chess Tour will come to an end this December, so make sure to keep on top of the tour’s viewership statistics as the event progresses with Chesswatch.
