New world champion Gukesh’s moves drive housefull shows, record online views for chess tournament

D Gukesh wins World Chess Championship. (Photo: X)

Emotions were running high at Habitat Club in Mumbai, which was broadcasting the live stream of the World Chess Championship in Singapore, with people crying and cheering for Gukesh Dommaraju, when he was crowned the youngest champion at the tender age of 18.

It was a housefull show for the on-ground event and the viewership online also recorded unprecedented numbers.

"The venue was housefull for the mega matches. We took up a small room at Habitat Club with a 100-people capacity for the ticketed event at Rs 500. However, we had to increase the capacity to 120 people because of the overwhelming demand. Had we known about  the huge demand, we'd have taken up a bigger venue," said Avadh Shah, who is the country director of Chess.com.

The success of the on-ground event of the World Chess Championship has encouraged Chess.com to plan more such events next year.

"We plan to do on-ground broadcast for upcoming events. For events that are big in nature such as the World Chess Championship we can look at similar arrangements next year. We will look at the calendar and then decide whether to hold virtual or physical events. It also depends on the lineup. We will plan our calendar accordingly," he added.

Loud all-round cheer for Gukesh

The crowd for the on-ground event not only partied hard after Gukesh won the title, but they also got a chance to speak with the champion virtually over a quick call.

Shah pointed out the growing viewership for the championship.

"It was increasing day-by-day. We had the second highest viewership on December 11 with total views of 2.4 million and peak watching of 185,000. Our highest viewership was on December 11 in terms of peak watching at 225,000 at a single point of time," he said.

These numbers are unprecedented, he added.

"Before the start of the championship, we had expected 50,000 people watching on an average day-on-day. We safely crossed it. Our highest is 4.5 times of that. We have broken all expectations," Shah said.

The surrounding content around the championship was over 50 million, which includes YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, among others.

The total viewership for the first two days of the championship was over two million with a peak viewership of 75,000 at a single point of time. Initially, the on-ground event recorded up to 80 per cent occupancy.

Both the online and offline events welcomed many famous personalities both from the world of chess and beyond it.

"A lot of guests — both global and local — joined our broadcast from time to time. They were from the world of chess and beyond. We had chess stars such Viswanath Anand, Levy Rozman, Vidit Gujrathi, Anish Giri, Arjun Erigaisi.  Tanmay Bhatt, Abish Mathew, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Anirban Dasgupta, among others, made up the non-chess stars. When these guests join virtually or in person they bring in more viewership. For instance, when Tanmay joined the broadcast at Habitat, he talked about the match and his shared his experience about the sport. Viewers lapped up technical nuances of the board game and non-chess related matters in equal measure," Shah said.

ChessBase India and Nodwin Gaming had brought the clash of the grandmasters (GMs) closer to home through its broadcast in Habitat Club, which was hosted by three influential voices from the board game, namely, International Master (IM) Tania Sachdev; founder of ChessBase India Sagar Shah; and comedian and chess influencer Samay Raina, who were tracking and analysing every move of the chess stars.

ChessBase India recorded 2.1 million views for game 13 on December 11. The viewership increased to 3.6 million for the 14th and the final game.

Shah also noted the audience demographic of the viewers who watched the games. "The 19-24 age group contributed to 39 per cent of views while the 25-34 age group contributed 32 per cent of views. Chennai. Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka were the top viewing states."

Chess champions

"Whenever India becomes world champion of any sport everyone takes note of the win. Many people get inspired to take up the sport. This will lead to a massive chess boom. Gukesh's win will take the indoor game's popularity to the next level as far playing and watching the sport is concerned," Shah said.

India has a pool of around 200,000 offline players, as many as 250 players play the game professionally and FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs, which is French for International Chess Federation) rated players in the country are 151,942.

There are around 600 titled players and around 85 GMs  in India.

Both player pool as well as viewership will grow, said Indranil Blah, a sports and athlete brand management consultant.

"You are seeing growth not just because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also because of shows like The Queen's Gambit. Chess has become cool. It was never cool earlier. It has become part of pop culture and more more people will play it and Gukesh's win will add more fuel to the fire," he added.

After the win, Gukesh also revealed the team that had a huge hand in his success. His seconds include Grzegorz Gajewski, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Pentala Harikrishna, Vincent Keymer, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Jan Klimkowski. He was also assisted by mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton.

"Many players play individually. In case of Gukesh, his seconds played an important role. Seconds help in training the challenger, what kind of opening, middle and endgame should the challenger prepare and what kind of tactic the player should deploy," Shah said.

Shah is preparing to welcome Gukesh at the airport upon his arrival from Singapore. "There will be a lot of fanfare," he added.