Pointe, endgame, castling… These and other terms that sound obscure for an ordinary person are now more relevant than ever – because Dubai is hosting the first World Chess Championship in three years, which runs until mid-December. Current world champion Magnus Carlsen and the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi are fighting for the chess crown.
The intense matches of the tournament are watched by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Lots of viewers follow the event on streaming services, and the current World Championship is already showing incredible performance, setting a new chess record for Peak Viewers. Esports Charts talks about the current statistics of the competition.
New chess record on streaming services
Initially, the World Chess Championship was supposed to take place in 2020, but it was postponed to the next year due to the pandemic. And the event probably only benefited from it, as classical chess has been attracting more and more viewers on streaming services over the past two years.
Most popular chess tournaments by Peak Viewers, with the current World Cup coming out on top
The most watched professional chess event up until now was the Opera Euro Rapid with 283K Peak Viewers, but the overall leader among chess tournaments was Pogchamps 3 by Chess.com, which featured popular content creators all around the world (xQc, pokimane, Ludwig, and others) and gathered a huge audience that ended up reaching 375K Peak Viewers. But the FIDE World Championship 2021 managed to set a new record.
Each round of the World Championship 2021 gathered over 300K Peak Viewers, and on the second day the tournament was watched by up to 401K Peak Viewers! This is almost 7% more than the previous record for chess on streaming services.
How did the tournament manage to set a new record?
The first reason is simple: it’s the long-awaited World Championship. The chess audience is already accustomed to the fact that all the largest tournaments are also broadcast on streaming platforms, and it is very convenient to follow events there. In addition, everyone is wondering whether Carlsen will be able to defend the title for the fifth (!) time.
The second most important reason is the variety of broadcasts and content. The event is streamed on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and VK. The viewers can find broadcasts in almost any language – from English to Tagalog.
Most streamers are only covering the matches of the World Championship. However, some content creators offer other kinds of content as well. For example, the Botez sisters broadcast live from Dubai, the hosting country of the tournament: they take interviews with the guests of the event, overview the venue of the tournament, etc.
On the record-setting day of broadcasts, the main English-language YouTube channel chess24 became the leader in terms of audience, being followed by up to 71.6K Peak Viewers. And the chief operating officer of the company Arkus Fredriksson is quite pleased with this fact:
«We have looked forward to the World Championship returning for a long time and have worked hard across our teams to create the best coverage. We are thrilled that chess24 is the most popular channel and largest contributor to the World Championship breaking the viewership record on just the second day and are motivated to bring even more viewers to chess throughout the event».
Arkus Fredriksson, COO of chess24 and CSO of Play Magnus Group
Note that although chess24 YT-channel was leading in terms of Peak Viewers on a record day, it is only one of more than 100 channels that cover the event. Chess.com also contributes significantly; both companies broadcast on dozens of channels of different language and collaborate with a variety of content creators. In total, both companies account for 80% of the Peak Viewers:
- Even though chess24 were the leaders on YouTube, their competitors from Chess.com took over the Twitch with 68,2K concurrent viewers on the record-breaking day of the event, which is only 5% less than the result of chess24.
- Main channels of chess24 and Chess.com were way more popular than the broadcast conducted by FIDE, which attracted only 27.7K Peak Viewers (62% and 60% less than chess24 and Chess.com, respectively).
Given the impressive media outreach of the World Championship, we expect even more viewers on the broadcasts in the coming days. It is very likely that the record will be broken several more times by the end of the event.
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Nepomniachtchi and Carlsen have already played five games out of 14, all of which ended in draws. Both players now have 2.5 points each. Today, December 2, is a day off at the tournament, and the games will resume tomorrow.
Note that extended data on the event is available to PRO subscribers. Esports Charts can also provide full access to any tournament stats that can be ordered directly from our sales team.
