Prize money in chess

no money

Greedy entities run chess . Look at the recent tournaments that brag about very low prize pools as large. Tata Steel 1st place , 10k for 3 weeks without expenses covered, does that sound like a good prize pool? Like most things ran by boomers, its stuck in the 90s. and unlikely to change till we get new management. These people are just out of touch.

 

How much do you really think the organizers made? It's free to watch, which I don't personally know anybody that actually watched it. It's live right now. I just checked YouTube and the channels currently streaming it have less than 15k views combined right now. How much do you think sponsors are paying for those numbers?

There's thots who could go live on insta right now and get more people watching. I don't believe the problem is greed. I think it's that classical chess is not spectator friendly. It takes forever and often ends in a draw. Add on top of that chess players are largely silent and don't talk trash. Give me a blitz or rapid tourney structure with one guy talking trash to his opponents, and you could get a lot of viewers. But that's not how things are done right now.

 The I'm not a gm speed championship tournament got well over 100k views. That format could pay real prize money. Classical is not the way. 

     The problem with this is that the vast majority of the entrants in these chess tournaments are there for the competition, a chance to play people outside of the regulars at the local chess club (or a chance to play anyone if they live in an area with little chess activity). These people have very little interest in the size of the prize fund, most of which will be gobbled up by GMs who are usually given free entry to enhance the tournaments' prestige and attract more entrants. 

     A substantial raise in prizes can only be paid for by a substantial raise in entry fees, which will keep more people away from the competition. It's a self-defeating proposition.

     I play in a small group that holds regular rated otb tournaments: six-round tournaments, one game every Sunday at a local library (no cost for the site). We pay $10/tournament each. This covers keeping the club registered as a US Chess Federation affiliate plus rating all games. The winner gets free entry to the next tournament.

     It wouldn't seem that such modest fees by the (inter)national organizations  could be that big a factor in tournament expense. Of course for prestigious international tournaments run by FIDE itself including larger prizes, players' expenses paid, and appearance fees sponsorship, broadcast fees, advertising tie-ins, tickets for spectators and the like are necessary.

 

FIDE gets a lot of their money from fees that national federations have to pay to be members. They also have title and event rating fees, though I don't know how much those contribute to the bottom line.

 

For official FIDE events, they bid those out and I think most of those require a portion of money for those events to go to FIDE and the rest to prizes (something along those lines).

Chess tournaments have long been a sponsored type thing. From rich patrons to chess fans putting up money to bring events to their area. At the local level, most organizers are hoping to at least break even and that's with donating their time. Most of the money in chess is ancillary to the game itself.

That's not unique to chess.  Over the years, I have played in bowling leagues, golf leagues, backgammon tournaments, etc.  All of them are funded by the players and offer token prizes.

If there are 10 players for a 6 round event then that is 30 games, which is rated for $7.50 if it is submitted on-line leaving $82.50 for all other expenses (after providing the winner a free entry to the next event).  The annual affiliate fee is $40.  With one game per week you might get 6 tournaments per year in (theoretically 8 but people probably want some breaks) for $455 to cover expenses other than the affiliate fee (club advertising, scoresheets, club equipment, ink cartridges, printer paper, occasional replacement of printers, periodic upgrades of pairing programs, TD/arbiter fees, etc.).

<<transition to the general discussion>>

In the US a top TD (arbiter) doing a significant event almost every weekend might be able to make $30,000 if traveling all over the country, but if the TD/arbiter has a regular job then exceeding $10,000 is rare (below $13,590 in the US is considered poverty level).

All of the people that both make chess and are good acquaintances/friends of me are either making their money teaching (primarily kids with parents that can afford the lessons), running the CCA (tournaments pretty much every weekend at sites all over the country), or GMs making a little money playing while most of their income comes from teaching.  Very few of those making money at chess have it as their primary source of income.

As far as the Millionaire event went, the entry fee of $1000 per player was so high that some of the lower rating classes has so few entries that anybody in those classes that entered were guaranteed to make more in prizes than they spent in the entry fee (after all other expenses were considered it was still a losing proposition for most people).

You may see paying spectators at rare events (think US Championship) but most of the time non-playing spectators only want to see family members or friends.

 

Well, not in theory. Any tournament can have income from participants, sponsors and audience which in turn depends on both the amount of money and amount of participants/sponsors/audience. So if we don't want to raise entry fee for participants: get more participants, get audience to pay or/and get more sponsors.

In practice there is a limit to how many people can be in most venues and most competitions are just 3-4 2-hour rounds. Rarely any speedchess at the same time or any interesting lecture/discussions or any shows (try simulant/blind chess or whatever) or... anything really that can get audience interested or other players who don't really care about classic chess for 6 hours in one day. 

Top level chess is almost impossible to understand to the average punter (without commentary at least) and the majority of games end in a draw. Still, it has been popular with the general public in the past and it has a genuine superstar in Magnus. IDK what the solution is.

 

Most organizers don't make any money with chess.

Chess simply does not have the necessary financial backing, mainly because it is not a spectator sport.

If you look at the history of the "big time sports," the players did not make a lot of money until the games became television mainstays.  I can remember reading articles in the 50's and 60's about the off-season jobs that the top football players had.  Professional athletes made good money relative to the rest of the population, but they didn't live in luxury. 

that's funny I laughed

“Chess is a poor mans game, generally people who are losers in life play it moving wooden pieces around on the board , trying to salvage their ego and poor self image by thrashing the ego and hurting an other poor soul like themselves, the misery of a chess masters life is proverbial, even the best ended up in mental asylums eg Steinitz and planinc, committed suicide eg vitolins and lembert oll , or died of hunger eg schechter, or were just burned out eg Fischer and Morphy, even great aleknine died penniless without enough money even to buy cigarettes , always remember the golden words chess is a good mistress but a bad master, if you become its slave it will rot your life so keep it as a hobby not a profession”

DAMN BRO! Enough doom and gloom in the world today without this post, true or not.

I think chess players like female basketball players for example, might think the world owes them a living and the food we eat and other day to day needs spontaneously appear without other effort and the market mechanism.

Chess is almost a cultural pursuit and approaches sport - let's not have that debate - but it is not what drives the economy.

Tournament organisers for their part will make a judgement - for better or worse - on what level of prizes and tournament players give them a reasonable profit. Clearly if they thought they could earn more by making prizes bigger they would over a number of tournament iterations.

The main reason is most tournaments in the United States and around the world do not cater to professional chess players.  When I played in over the board tournaments in the '80s and '90s I played for the fun of it.  I would travel well over a hundred miles to play in a small tournament where the prize money would not even pay for my gas.  Only elite players can actually make a living off playing chess and maybe some YouTube streamers. 

Bobby Fischer was ostracized for demanding the prize money  he got in  his world championship bid  which was unheard of at the time but it's really because of him that the professional players are getting paid as well as they are now.

Doubt it's about feeling owed a living and more lack of understanding where money comes from. If there is no audience, why would sponsors pay more for sponsorship? If there is no audience then there is no entry fees from audience and therefore no money from that source. So, should club which organize the tournament pay more from their own pocket? 

But many players don't think about the flow, or the lack of it, of money and instead wonder why eSports and poker have larger money prizes.