The Julius Baer Generation Cup — the fifth event in the 2023 Champions Chess Tour — was held from August 30 to September 4, with Magnus Carlsen coming out on top. It ended as the sixth most popular event in Chess this year and the second most popular one in the series.
In the Grand Final, Magnus Carlsen defeated Alireza Firouzja 3:2 in a rematch of their Division I Winner's Final, which the World No 1 had convincingly won 3:0. The 20-year-old Iranian-French grandmaster, aware of the second chance he had earned, have his legendary opponent a much harder time, taking the tie to a fifth game before finally being vanquished.
The Julius Baer Generation Cup 2023 carried an overall prize pool of $235K, with Magnus Carlsen pocketing $30K and Alireza Firouzja taking home $20K. Moreover, the Norwegian extended his lead at the top of the overall standings by 200 points with one more competition left in the 2023 CCT.
This tournament recorded 114K Peak Viewers during the Playoffs summit clash between Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja. In fact, this game outperformed the next most popular match, the same duo's earlier clash in the Division I Winner's Final, by 71.8%, showing just how much interest this rematch between generations had bred.
Most of the popular matches came from towards the end of the Playoffs stage, with Alireza Firouzja making the most appearances at three. All this helped the Julius Baer Generation Cup 2023 also register 1.01M Hours Watched and 31K Average Viewers over an airtime of 31 hours and 55 minutes.
This chess event saw the dominance of YouTube and English when it comes to talking about platforms and languages, with both enjoying over 60% of the overall watch hours share. Twitch was the only other video streaming site to cross the double-digit mark, while no language was able to do that outside the top spot.
When it comes to streamers, Magnus Carlsen was the only individual channel to make a difference, finishing as the third most popular one overall. Hikaru Nakamura, who was fourth on the overall points table leading up to this competition and remains so after its completion, posted some low numbers. It could have been because he was not part of the playing field, which would have reduced his interest in streaming it live.
Coming to tournament comparisons, the Julius Baer Generation Cup 2023 finished as the second most popular one among the five editions held so far in the 2023 CCT. It was also the third-most watched one, with the leader on both metrics being the Airthings Masters 2023 (the first competition of the series to be held in February), which did 2.01 HW and 171K PV.
It also ended as the sixth most popular Chess tournament to be held so far this year, with the leader being the FIDE World Championship 2023, which holds a huge lead over the next best entry. Chess.com Pogchamps 5’s appearance in the third spot shows how much the sport has grown over the past few years and how it has become a viable streaming option that can involve some of the biggest names from the content creation world.
The sixth and last event in the 2023 Champions Chess Tour will be conducted at the end of this month, from the 25th to the 29th. With some big names still in the hunt to make the Semi-finals (to be held in December), Chess fans are in for a great time.
