The Champions Chess Tour 2022, also known as the 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour hosted by Chess24, kicked off last week with the first out of nine events in the series — the Airthings Masters 2022.
The first stage of the prestigious online rapid chess series was held last week and featured 16 players fighting for a $150,000 shared prize pool. Besides some of the world’s best rapid chess players, the tournament’s line-up included a great deal of young talent, going down as the Tour’s youngest line-up so far.
The Airthings Masters 2022 was streamed on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and VK Live, with the highest number of spectators tuning in to broadcasts on YouTube. In 34 hours of Air Time, the event generated more than 1.3M Hours Watched. On average, 38.6K viewers spectated the competition.
The peak was reached during the match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi on day 1 of the final, with 88.3K concurrent viewers tuning in.
With the score tied after five draws during the first day of the final, the reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway overcame his Russian rival by winning the second 4-game mini-match with a score of 2.5-0.5.
The competition’s final turned out to be a repeat of the recent World Chess Championship 2021 in Dubai when Carlsen won against Nepomniachtchi following five consecutive draws in the final match. Carlsen and Nepo faced off for the first time since the championship.
As a five-time World Chess Champion, three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion, Carlsen has been the number one in International Chess Federation (FIDE) world chess rankings for over a decade. His peak rating from 2014 is the highest in history and he also holds the record for the longest unbeaten win streak at the top level in classical chess, winning 125 consecutive games.
The dominant language of broadcast among the audience of Airthings Masters 2022 was English, followed by Russian and Turkish. While the event was broadcasted in 13 languages, only nine language-specific broadcasts surpassed 1K Peak Viewers. This included Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Polish, German and Philippine.
The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour launched initially in 2020 as a new, innovative chess circuit organized by Play Magnus Group. The $1.6 million tour showcases some of the world’s greatest chess players at prestigious online tournaments in a revamped format with six “Regular” and three “Major” online rapid chess tournaments spread out over the season.
Compared with Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals 2021, the final event of the previous season of Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, the series saw an 8.4% increase in average viewership and 17.66% increase in concurrent viewership.
Although the number Hours Watched generated by Airthings Masters 2022 was 21.73% lower than HW count of the previous event, this was due to reduced Air Time, which was 27.6% lower.
The Meltwater Champions Chess Tour will return with the next event, which is scheduled to run from March 19th to 16th.
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In the light of the recent Russian military invasion in Ukraine, FIDE banned Russia and Belarus from holding official FIDE chess competitions and events. Moreover, Russian and Belarusian players are banned from displaying national flags and playing national anthems at FIDE-rated events. FIDE will also terminate all sponsorship agreements with Russian or Belarusian sanctioned and/or state-controlled companies.
