From its 6th Century origins in India, chess has often been seen as a proxy for intrigue, politics and even war.
Yet, chess is simultaneously old and new, according to Ilya Merenzon, chief executive of World Chess, whose current world championship tussle between champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway and U.S. challenger Fabiano Caruana is turning out to be the closest fought battle on the square strategy board for decades.
The prize they are contending is the oldest world championship of any sport, beginning in 1886, a decade ahead of the first global tournament for figure skating. However, Russian-born Merenzon also views chess as the world’s last start-up sport.
Developed and Mature
Everything else is so developed and mature but chess was never really developed until the internet came along,” he told me in an interview.
“Chess apps are now the most played of any sport in the world, downloaded on more than 1 billion smartphones.
“One in six people in the world are playing chess on their phone. That makes it more popular than soccer. Community-wise, it is as big as Facebook. But it has truly never been developed so we are in a bit of an odd position.
“We are a kind of start-up but start-ups usually have a product but not a market. We have this huge market which has never really had a product so it is the other way around.
“But potentially it can be a billion dollar business just because the game is very, very popular. It’s up to us whether we can bring people something they are happy to pay for.”
Based in London, World Chess is entirely separate from the World Chess Federation (FIDE), the game’s rule-making organisation, whose presidential elections in October were dogged by allegations of vote-buying, fake news and Russian meddling.
Potential
Merenzon’s outfit has exclusive commercial rights over the World Chess Championships and the potential is shown by the viewing figures for the last World Chess championship in New York in 2016 when the total reach for the whole event on television was two billion people.
Merenzon, a communications and marketing professional who studied the economics of information and has lived in New York for 15 years, has been running World Chess since 2014 and has played a major role in the monetisation of the game.
“Having this phenomenal outlet is worth huge amounts of money, if managed properly,” he says. “Chess is changing rapidly.
“Five or six years ago, the average age of chess players was about 40 and the age of the world champion was 44.
“But at the last championship, both players were 27 and now the average age is 23 and the challenger is 25.
“Smartphones have altered the age of the opponents. Before, you had to join a club and go somewhere to play.
“Now, it is all smartphone-based and there is a geek culture. Smart is the new sexy so it is phenomenally popular in silicon valley and within Google and Facebook.
“It’s been such a dramatic change that in four or five years it has almost completely renewed the audience.”
Expansion
The issue is how chess can be monetised. Television is one answer.
The world championships have been available to watch live via pay per view since 2016, with 45,000 online tickets sold in Europe for the current championships.
However, after some experimentation with recorded highlight formats, World Chess has just sold a three-year package of global broadcasting rights to the competition to Eurosport, the European sports channel owned by Discovery.
There are also paper chess sets for children, a range of clothing, right down to chess socks, and, of course chess sets.
Merenzon talks proudly of an official chess board designed for the London championships, which he says retails for “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
”I think we are the largest chess retailer in the world,” he adds, “but of course it has to be bigger.
”My job is to develop a range of products that hundreds of millions of people who love chess would want to buy or somehow connect to.
“Chess organizing is a rather old-fashioned business so we had to make it entertaining and we have to develop products that people who love chess would never think of.
“I think we are succeeding . The merchandising for the London championships is really non-standard for chess and we developed a sexy logo.
”Chess had long ceased to be part of the design scene but we changed that and have rebranded the chess experience. I think chess is actually the best in terms of branding of any sport now. You won’t find anything as remotely as sexy as chess now.”
There is also scope to expand chess to new territories outside the U.S, which is number one in terms of internet chess traffic, and Europe, where Germany is number two and the U.K. ninth.
Caruana’s emergence as the biggest American chess star since Bobby Fischer also excites Merenzon.
”We now have an American playing in the final,”he says. “We hope that’s going to substantially increase subscriptions.
”It’s also going to change the way that chess is financed, not only for us but for all other organizers if this habit of paying for the content settles in. Hopefully, it’s going to turn out like boxing.”
