World chess championship match sees a surge in viewership numbers

The World championship match between D. Gukesh and Ding Liren garnered a lot of attention.

FIDE provided live coverage of the World championship match on its YouTube channel.

SINGAPORE

The biggest tipping point for chess was the 1972 World chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. It was the match that actually put chess in focus on a global level for the first time.

Since the Cold War was at its peak, a contest between the United States and the former Soviet Union was going to be big news. As was the presence of Fischer, a genius to whom modern chess owes a lot; he brought money to the game, and made it popular beyond the erstwhile USSR.

The World championship, which concluded at World Resorts Sentosa on Thursday, could be another turning point for the mind game. It should be the most followed chess event in history.

The live streams – on multiple websites and YouTube channels – were watched by millions. Apart from FIDE’s official channel, the match was aired live, among others, by chess24 (owned by chess.com) and ChessBase India, with each of them having their own commentators.

Thursday’s final game, which saw D. Gukesh beating Ding Liren and to become the youngest World champion in history at the age of 18, attracted a total of 38 lakh views on the ChessBase channel. On chess24, it was 14 lakh and on FIDE 6.4 lakh.

Besides the live streams, there were also recap videos of each match, by top players like World No.1 Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, were also available and were popular. The recap of the final game on Carlsen’s newly-launched Take Take Take has been viewed 6.4 lakh times so far.

Many newspapers were also blogging live the World championship on their websites, and attracted views in lakhs, too. The match buzzed on X, formerly Twitter, too. Grandmasters like Anish Giri and Susan Polgar were posting live analyses of the game.

Along with Grandmaster commentators, like Viswanathan Anand, Judit Polgar, Giri, Peter Leko and David Howell, they made following the World championship easier and informative.