Pogchamps is returning to the screen at the end of July. Pogchamps is an online amateur chess tournament filled to the brim with internet personalities and streamers. The event is organized by Chess.com, an internet chess server with over 100M users. Spanning two weeks, Pogchamps 5 will be live-streamed on Twitch and YouTube with $100,000 USD in prizes available. 
The first Pogchamps (stylized as PogChamps) tournament was held in mid-2020. Participants were various Twitch streamers and commentary and coaching were handled by Hikaru Nakamura and Alexandra Botez: two titans in the online Chess entertainment world.
Pogchamps remains a Twitch-centric event but throughout the iterations, Chess.com has introduced more celebrities into the mix. From strongman Hafthor Julius Bjornsson, known for his depiction of The Mountain in Game of Thrones, to actor Rainn Wilson, from The Office, Chess.com continues to develop and grow the cultural importance of Pogchamps.
Pogchamp 5 details
Beginning at the end of July, Pogchamps 5 will see 16 players battle it out in an intense group stage before playoffs, which will end on August 5th. Pogchamps is taking a step in a brand new and exciting direction, hosting an offline finals event in Los Angeles, California. The finals will take place on August 19th and be broadcasted live to the world.
Previous competitor and content mogul Ludwig will also return to the event, but not to compete; Ludwig will host Pogchamps 5 alongside Chess.com. Pogchamps 5 will then mark the first time Ludwig has not competed in a Pogchamps event.
If you haven’t heard of Ludwig, he’s one of the biggest content creators both on YouTube and previously on Twitch. He has 5.1M subscribers on YouTube and his videos have been viewed over 1.5B times. Ludwig also had a large Twitch following, before taking a deal with YouTube to exclusively stream on their site.
A full list of all 16 participants has not been released, and according to a post on Twitter by Chess.com, it seems that Chess.com has not decided on a definitive list of participants yet. QTCinderella has so far been confirmed to participate, alongside Welsh streamer CDawgVA. CDawgVA previously was a finalist in the Tournament Arc event by Chess.com, a chess tournament with a $5,000 USD prize pool exclusively for Anime Youtubers.
YouTuber I did a thing, famous for his ingenuity and engineering ability, is also confirmed. And finally, eSports player SonicFox will be taking part. SonicFox is one of the fastest-growing creators in the industry at the moment. He currently sits at 214K Followers on Twitch, but his statistics are indicative of a channel with a much higher viewership.
Over the last 30 days, SonicFox has gained 16.9K Followers, collected 125K Hours Watched, and had an Average Viewers count of 2.6K. It’s unclear if his Fighting Game prowess will help him reach a Pogchamps victory, but only time will tell.
Pogchamp Viewership
Pogchamp has overall been a very successful Chess event, regularly drawing in tens of thousands of concurrent viewers on average. Chess.com Pogchamps, the inception of the event series, drew in an Average Viewers figure of 105.7K and with 45 hours Airtime the event reached 4.7M Hours Watched.
The initial hype wave slowed down for the second and fourth events, but Pogchamps 3 was not only the most successful Pogchamps event but one of the most successful Chess events of all time.
Pogchamps 3 reached a high of 375.1K Peak Viewers. With such astronomical stats, the event remains in third place for highest Peak Viewers of all time in Chess. Only the FIDE events from the international chess federation, viewed by chess fans worldwide, have been able to compete with Pogchamps 3.
Pogchamps 3 owes its success largely due to one of the best-curated list of participants ever organised for a streamer event. With competitors such as MrBeast, Pokimane, and xQc, the event appealed heavily to the Anglo-American sphere of content creation.
However, Chess.com also cleverly appealed to a much more international audience, having invited Spanish streamer Rubius and French steamer Sardoche. Rubius is the second most-followed Spanish Twitch streamer with 14.1M Followers, and Sardoche ranks in the top 20 for French streamers with 1.2M Followers. With these two attending the event, Pogchamps 3 garnered an impressive amount of viewership from both Spanish-speaking and French-speaking audiences.
Chess.com has shown in the past they have the ability to construct the biggest Chess events of the year in terms of viewership, and Pogchamps 5 only builds upon this success. Will Pogchamps 5 overthrow Pogchamps 3 and become one of the most-watched events of the year? Follow along and watch the action starting at the end of July on the official Chess.com streams.
