Chess.com
Chess has reached a new level of popularity in 2023. According to Chess.com, January 20th had the most active members playing chess on their website ever with 10 million active members. Chess.com has pointed out many reasons that could have caused this growth but we are going to focus on how live streaming has contributed. Chess influencer GothamChess has a great video giving his thoughts on why Chess has become so popular.
Influencers
Many professional chess players have pivoted to becoming chess influencers to not only monetize chess, but to help spread the game to a new audience. Channels Like GMHikaru, BotezLive, and GothamChess have all become household names on Twitch with each of them averaging over 4K viewers. In 2022 alone these streamers were able to generate over 20M hours watched with GMHikaru’s channel generating 12.7M.
Streaming Events
Chess Tournaments on Twitch have marked major milestones in live streaming. Pogchamps 3 marked the peak of chess live streaming with massive influencers like Mr. Beast, Pokimane, xQc, Ludwig, and MoistCritikal participating. This event caused the Chess category on Twitch to reach 376K concurrent viewers.
Ludwig’s Chessboxing event was the largest creator-run chess event of 2022 with a peak viewership of 317K hours watched. This event alone broke his previous concurrent viewership record that he set during his subathon.
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