Levy Rodman, known by his alias GothamChess, is one of the world’s most popular chess content creators and online personalities. He is well known for his educative and entertaining videos about chess, and he is also an International Master at the game. Although most of his content comes in the form of videos, the creator with 5.3M+ YouTube subscribers also sometimes hosts livestreams. Most recently, these broadcasts have been focused on covering his games at over-the-board chess events.
GothamChess returned to over-the-board chess this year for his new “Road to Grandmaster” series. The content creator stopped competitively attending chess events a couple of years ago, believing he had plateaued and decided he would rather focus on his content creation career. But now, Rodman decided to compete again, as part of a long-term series on his channel covering his journey to achieve the Grandmaster title.
For this series, Rodman has made content surrounding his training with his coach, analyses and recaps of his own matches, and general insights and progress updates. His videos recapping his games at over-the-board events have received hundreds of thousands of viewers each, but he has also been livestreaming his games, featuring commentary from his coach, Latvian Grandmaster Arturs Neikšāns.
The Madrid Chess Festival 2024 was GothamChess’ first tournament since returning to competition this year. The event featured three main events: the Closed A, which featured GothamChess, Closed B, and Open, featuring other popular chess creator Anna Cramling. Rodman enjoyed a successful event both in terms of the content it generated and competitively. GothamChess finished the event in 2nd place overall, with 5.5 points and having outperformed multiple grandmasters.
GothamChess’ return to competition was enough to earn 22.9K Peak Viewers and generate 274.9K Hours Watched for his personal Twitch channel. In other words, 46.3% of the total viewership achieved by this chess event came directly from Rodman’s Twitch channel.
The Madrid Chess Festival 2024 was GothamChess’ return to over-the-board games, but he has since competed in multiple other events too. His most recent tournament was the Labor Day Invitational 2024 which concluded on September 2 in New York City. This event generated some of his most popular broadcasts on his YouTube Live channel, although he struggled to win matches at the tournament.
Over-the-board classic chess games are lengthy, and Levy’s coach/commentator did not have much time off throughout the event. In only 5 days, more than 31 hours of chess content was broadcast live through GothamChess’ YouTube Live, and in total his channel received 250.6K Hours Watched for these broadcasts.
His viewership for these matches peaked at 19.7K PV on YouTube, coming during the second round of matches. After suffering a round one loss to Grandmaster Djurabek Khamrakulov, Rodman was hoping to turn his luck around. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be, and his peak viewership for this event was reached while the creator lost with the black pieces against FIDE Master James Chirilov.
The Labor Day Invitational was an event to forget for GothamChess. He finished the tournament with 2 points out of 9, having only won a single game. Despite his struggles with the pieces, his YouTube Live broadcasts were being watched by thousands of concurrent viewers at any given moment. Rodman’s fans remained loyal to cheer him on throughout the tough event, and he received 7.8K Average Viewers for his YouTube-based live coverage of his games. Combining the viewership he received across both Twitch and YouTube, this made the event his most-watched tournament of the Road to GM series so far.
Collating the viewership for all of GothamChess’ live broadcasts of his games across both YouTube Live and Twitch, the American creator has generated 644.5K Hours Watched for his livestreaming channels in just under four months. For reference, this is more watch time than his channels generated throughout the entire second half of 2023.
Many of Rodman’s viewers have been consistently watching his broadcasts, and his tournament coverage on Twitch’s Estimated Average View Duration settled at 38 minutes, almost double what Anna Cramling recorded for the same period. Critically for GothamChess, his live broadcasts of his games have not only appealed to a wide audience but keep these audience members engaged and active for longer than his peers.
In the long term, Rodman can likely expect the viewership for these streams to grow as he finds more new fans through this series. GothamChess Twitch viewership has been falling in the last year, and this Road to GM coverage was the kick his channel needed to record viewership closer to what he was able to achieve during the 2020 pandemic chess boom.
As it stands, the top 5 most popular games Rodman has streamed on Twitch all came from the Madrid Chess Festival 2024. His tight draw against Spanish International Master Adrian Suarez Uriel received 23.4K PV thanks to Rodman’s quick-thinking with low time. The American player managed to save a disadvantageous endgame situation with a draw by repetition.
Oddly, his victories at the Madrid Chess Festival were not as popular as his draws and losses. Even his second-most-popular match against IM Julio Suarez Gomez resulted in a loss for GothamChess after a destructive late-game blunder.
Viewership for GothamChess’ live coverage of his Road to GM games has been some of his most successful livestreaming content in years. The American player is grinding his way to the ultimate chess title, and this goal will likely fuel his channels with content for years to come. Although many other chess competitors stream their games live, Rodman’s openness about his training and his coverage of every aspect of the journey is what makes his content unique.
The creator uploads videos with his coach analysing his matches, creates recaps both on the day of and weeks after his over-the-board games, and provides unique insights as to his thought processes during matches. All of this content together helps GothamChess to get viewers especially interested in live coverage of his games, with fans deeply invested in his results.
Next for Rodman’s live content, he has planned a small two-person event against GM Pia Cramling, titled “Clash of Generations”. The event will likely be one of his most popular livestreamed events ever, thanks to the combination of his audience, and those of Pia and her daughter Anna Cramling.
