The Champions Chess Tour 2023 Finals was held in early December and concluded the CCT 2023 season. The Champions Chess Tour is a tournament circuit that has millions in prize pool for its competitors, the players with the most points accumulated across the 6-tournament season qualify for the Playoffs. In 2023, the Finals featured a $500,000 prize pool for four of the best chess players in the world to compete for.
2023 was a revolutionary year for the CCT. In late 2022, the Play Magnus Group was purchased by Chess.com, and the internet chess website took over the operations of the Champions Chess Tour. Chess.com organised the year of events and mixed things with a newly structured league for its competitors.
CCT 2023 Season Recap
The 2023 CCT hosted 6 tournaments throughout the year. Airthings Masters in February and Chessable Masters in April kicked off the year; Magnus Carlsen took his first victory of the season at the Airthings Masters, and his live streamer colleague Hikaru Nakamura was victorious at the Chessable Masters event.
At the ChessKid Cup in May, Magnus chose not to compete and Nodirbek Abdusattorov was the ultimate winner. The Aimchess Rapid in July again was claimed by Carlsen, with Wesley So taking home a 2nd place finish. The next two events, the Aimchess Rapid and Julius Baer Generation Cup were both not attended by Hikaru Nakamura, and Carlsen claimed two more victories.
Although Hikaru was victorious at the Chessable Masters event, a blunder against Caruana was one of the most-watched Hikaru clips of the entire season
After the final AI Cup, which was won by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the CCT advanced into its Playoffs stage. The Playoffs began with an 8-man round-robin group. Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So earned 6 points each, more than any other competitors, and advanced directly to the Semifinals. Fabiano Caruana and Nodirbek Abdusattorov qualified for the Semifinals after advancing through the Survival Stage, claiming the final two spots in the Semifinals.
The Semifinals were the opening matches of the Champions Chess Tour 2023 Finals: Carlsen advanced into the finals after a strong 2-0 victory against Caruana, and So managed a closer 2-1 victory over Abdusattorov. Magnus Carlsen had looked strong the entire season, and after a dominant Playoffs performance, he claimed the championship with a confident 2-0 win over Wesley So.
CCT 2023 Viewership Statistics
The Champions Chess Tour 2023 Finals attracted tens of thousands of viewers and culminated in 167.6K Peak Viewers for the final championship match between Carlsen and So. The coverage of the Finals stage was live for over 45 hours, and the CCT Finals garnered 3.48M Hours Watched for this stage. In total, all events of the CCT 2023 season received over 10.9M Hours Watched.
There were multiple English-language broadcasts of the event hosted on YouTube Live, and these became the most popular language and platform of the event coverage. A generous portion of the viewership also came from Twitch, with some watch time generated by Kick additionally.
Although the event was the Finals of the CCT 2023 season, it received fewer peak concurrent viewers than another CCT event earlier in the season. The tournament did not receive low viewership, it still ranks within the top 20 chess events in our database, however, the event received less viewership than smaller chess events around the globe.
Viewership at the start of the CCT season peaked at the Airthings Masters 2023 at 171.4K Peak Viewers. The viewership was extremely promising for the upcoming season, but the remaining tournaments in the schedule were not able to reach the same viewership as the initial Airthings Masters event.
Viewership interest in the CCT events waned slightly as the season advanced. Viewership reached its lowest at the ChessKid Cup but bounced back to breaking the 100K PV mark twice for the last two events.
One part of the decline of CCT viewership was Hikaru Nakamura’s move to Kick. In early 2023, Hikaru announced he had signed a non-exclusive deal with the platform to stream there. For the remainder of the CCT season, Hikaru would mainly broadcast the events on Kick, rather than on Twitch. Hikaru’s Kick streams received less viewership than his Twitch streams; sometimes he would stream over 20 hours on Kick for an event, but his much shorter Twitch broadcasts would achieve a higher peak viewership.
Magnus Carlsen wins the Champions Chess Tour 2023
On top of this, the official Chess.com broadcasts on Twitch and YouTube Live accumulated less viewership throughout the season. In a year of prestigious and star-studded events, the CCT may have gone underappreciated compared to other tournaments.
Although the 2023 CCT season was not able to end with a big viewership spike, it did record impressive numbers compared to the previous year. It is worth noting, the 2022 CCT season received surprisingly low viewership for the circuit. In 2021, the circuit was receiving high viewership throughout examples, for example at the Opera Euro Rapid event which garnered 283.3K PV.
2023 was an exciting year for chess, the FIDE World Championship, WIDE World Cup, and even Chess.Com Pogchamps 5 were some of the most-watched chess events ever. These events garnered hundreds of thousands of viewers at peak, and prove the Chess world has much more room to grow in live streaming after exploding onto the scene in recent years.
The Champions Chess Tour Finals did not receive as much viewership as the event organisers may have hoped for. The first event of the year, Airthings Masters 2023, received a higher peak viewership than the ultimate match of the circuit, and viewership dipped low during the middle part of the season. But the world of live streaming is extremely positive towards chess at the moment; other events and tournaments are setting series records for their events and reaching a larger audience every year. The CCT may have not had a perfect 2023, but 2024 is another prime opportunity for the tournament circuit to grow and develop its audience in live streaming.
