Gukesh Dommaraju: Gukesh Dommaraju’s triumph heralds ’83 moment’ for chess

Gukesh Dommaraju’s crowning as the World Chess Champion has propelled the sport’s popularity to new heights in India-livestreams of matches on platforms like YouTube, ChessBase, Chess.com and Lichess.org are drawing record-breaking numbers of Indian viewers.“Chess in India is now having a 1983 moment,” said Akshat Rathee, managing director and cofounder of esports firm Nodwin Gaming, which along with ChessBase India exclusively streamed the World Chess Championship in the country. “It has now become the fourth largest watched sport after cricket, kabaddi and BGMI tournaments.”

The Dommaraju-Ding Liren tussle saw upwards of two million views with a peak viewership of 75,000, Nodwin Gaming said.

Some 500-odd people turned up in Mumbai’s Habitat Club to view the match in-person, said Avadh Shah, country head of Chess.com, who was delivering the commentary with popular influencer Samay Raina. “Gukesh’s historic victory as the youngest undisputed World Champion is an immense achievement for chess in India, and an inspiration globally,” Theophilus Wait, director of operations at France-based Lichess, told ET.

Lichess, a non-profit platform dedicated to play and study of chess, said the platform has seen an 1100% increase in engagement from Indian viewers in December.

“Interest in chess has been steadily growing in India, but it’s clear that the world championship has accelerated that growth tremendously,” Wait said. The site receives over 100 million hits per month with nearly two million monthly active users.

Nodwin Gaming runs three Chess IPs with popular influencers like Samay Raina, Tanmay Bhat, Suhani Shah, Zakir Khan, Biswa Kalyan Rath and Saina Nehwal owning teams who have competed for a prize pool of ₹40 lakh ($47,000) in the past. “We also plan to start a mini league in 2025,” Rathee told ET.The Grandmasters

Not just viewers, but India is also the largest base of chess grandmasters. There are 151,942 FIDE (International Chess Federation)-rated players in the country and nearly 85 grandmasters including Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Arjun Erigaisi, Anish Giri and Raunak Sadhwani who top the charts on Chess.com and Lichess.org.

In the online world, India is already the largest base of players with over 500,000 accounts on Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.

These platforms host daily tournaments with prize money ranging between $100-150. For larger leagues, prize pools can go up.

Lichess, for example, regularly hosts prize fund tournaments with a $1,000 prize every two weeks. The highest prize fund on Lichess was for $625,000, where the first prize was 1 Bitcoin.

On Chess.com, the prize pool can go up to $2-3 million.