Chessable Masters 2024 was the first of four events scheduled for this year’s Champions Chess Tour. The tour is Chess.com’s most prestigious annual event series, and this year’s Chessable Masters events kicked the tour off. Not only did the 2024 edition enjoy its highest prize pool ever with $300,000 up for grabs, but it was the most popular iteration of the event yet.
This year’s Champions Chess Tour will feature four online events, culminating in an in-person Finals event. In total, there is $1,700,000 put aside for prizes, $300,000 for each of the four online events and $500,000 for the Finals. The CCT offers three divisions for players to compete in, ensuring fair and exciting matches for all involved. Generally, the viewership for the event largely reflects the viewership for the first division, where some of the world’s most popular Grandmasters can be found.
Since Chess.com took over the CCT in 2023, viewership has been growing considerably for the tour. 2023 marked the first year that the vast majority of CCT events reached over 100K PV, and 2024 is continuing this trend. Compared to 2023, this year’s CCT is much more condensed, featuring fewer tournaments but with higher prize pools. The hope is that this condensed season will help the CCT achieve consistently high viewership for each event of the year.
Chessable Masters 2024 viewership statistics
The Chessable Masters 2024 event reached 114.4K Peak Viewers for its Grand Final match between Magnus Carlsen and the rising star Alireza Firouzja. The peak viewership for this year did set a new record for the event series, but only marginally.
Although the event did increase its peak viewership slightly, it recorded only 1.25M Hours Watched and 38.2K Average Viewers throughout the event. This represents a decrease of 10.5K average concurrent viewers and almost 280K fewer hours of watch time recorded compared to 2023. Although the event reached a slightly higher peak viewership compared to 2023, viewership on average throughout the entire event dropped.
The Chess.com official broadcast channels were the most popular options for viewers to enjoy the event from home, but Magnus Carlsen’s YouTube channel was the third-most-popular channel with 14K PV, and Hikaru Nakamura’s Kick channel was the third-most-watched with 133.6K HW. Both of these channels were critical for the peak viewership reached by the event, but neither of them broadcasted the entire tournament. Magnus’ channel was live for only 15 hours of the event, and Hikaru broadcasted for 22 and a half hours. The fact that these channels did not cover the entire event may account for the lower average viewership of the tournament.
The only two channels to broadcast the entire event were the Chess.com English-language YouTube Live and Twitch broadcasts. Other Chess.com broadcasts such as the Spanish, Turkish, or Portuguese broadcasts, did not cover the entire event. Chess is an extremely international sport, and having parts of the event only covered by the English-language channels may have put some viewers off.
The most popular and most-watched Chessable Masters tournaments
Compared to last year, the 2024 edition of the Chessable Masters tournament recorded slightly more peak concurrent viewers. Although this increase is only marginal, it is significantly more than the event series garnered before being acquired by Chess.com.
Chess.com’s takeover of the CCT has largely been a success. The tour has been generally enjoying higher viewership and a wider range of coverage, although the fact that Chessable Masters 2024 was not covered in its entirety for non-English-speaking audiences is disappointing.
If the CCT can effectively appeal to the international audiences and advertise its events using Chess.com’s platform and existing audience, this year’s CCT may become the most popular iteration of the series in its history. ChessWatch will continue to track viewership data for the remaining tournaments of this year’s CCT, alongside other major chess events throughout the year.
