The Meltwater Tour final was last month, partly held in an esports studio in Oslo, Norway, built by Play Magnus.
Julius Baer, a Swiss wealth management bank, became the main sponsor of a second so-called challengers tour for up-and-coming players. Among those who signed up were Meltwater, a media intelligence company, for which the tour was renamed FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange and Mastercard. The inclusion of top players, including the world champion, allowed the tour to attract sponsors. The events featured 44 of the world’s best players, including Carlsen.
BEST GARY KASPAROV CHESS BOOK SERIES
“What could be an interesting concept for engaging more fans around the world? What should be the format?” Play Magnus organized a series of 10 mostly online tournaments with $1.6 million (€1.4 million)in prizes. “We worked with Magnus quite a lot on that,” Thome said. Once again, Thome said, Carlsen was brought in to advise. Then, last year, with the pandemic having shut down all in-person tournaments and also having postponed the World Championship, the company decided to create its own competitions. So Magnus pushed for the merger in March 2019 with Chess24, one of the principle playing sites on the internet.
“He very much wanted a play zone when we had just the apps,” Henrik Carlsen said. Photograph: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty ImagesĬarlsen’s ideas have long had an influence on the company’s acquisition strategy. “The ideas that he stands for are definitely the backbone of what the company believes in.”Ĭarlsen will defend his world title later this month. “What is important for Magnus is making the game more accessible for more fans around the world,” he said. It is symbiosis in a way.” Thome echoed the point. They really want to have Magnus on board on every important decision. “We have very good communications with management in the company,” Henrik Carlsen said. His father sits on the board of directors, and Magnus Carlsen is consulted on major decisions. Though Carlsen has no role in the day-to-day operations of the company that bears his name, he has an outsized influence on its strategy. Magnus Chess, in turn, is 85 per cent owned by Carlsen that makes his personal stake in Play Magnus worth nearly $9 million (€8 million). Magnus Chess, the private entity created when Carlsen was 16 to handle his winnings, owns 9 per cent of Play Magnus, making it the second-largest shareholder. It is the only publicly traded chess company in the world. One year after it went public on the Euronext Growth Oslo stock exchange, Play Magnus now has a market capitalization of about $115 million (€102 million). It now includes an online playing site, multiple teaching and training platforms and digital and book publishing arms.Īccording to Andreas Thome, Play Magnus’ chief executive, the company has about 250 employees and about four million registered users of its products and proprietary learning programmes. Initially designed as an app that allowed users to mimic Carlsen’s playing style and strength at different ages, Play Magnus has expanded, mostly through acquisitions, to become a company with a dozen subsidiaries. But the main vehicle for his business ventures is Play Magnus, a company that he co-founded in 2013, the year he became world champion. In the process, he has amassed a small fortune.Ĭarlsen has several private sponsorship agreements, including with Unibet, a sports betting site, Isklar, a Norwegian water company, and Simonsen Vogt Wiig, a Norwegian law firm.
He has also done something that none of his contemporaries or predecessors, not even Garry Kasparov, who held the world title from 1985 to 2000, managed to do: he has leveraged his fame to become one of the chess world’s leading impresarios. Yet win or lose, the payday will only add incrementally to the millions of dollars Carlsen has earned in his career. As much as 60 per cent will go to the winner. The prize pool for the event is $2 million (€ 1.78 million). Carlsen, the reigning world champion, will turn 31 at the end of the month, only days after he opens his defence of the title Wednesday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in a best-of-14-game match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, a Russian grandmaster. Magnus has exceeded that relatively modest goal. Henrik said at the time that he hoped that Magnus would earn enough by age 25 that, if he decided to stop playing, he would at least be financially independent. By the time Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian chess grandmaster, was 16, he was successful enough that his parents, Henrik and Sigrun, decided to form a small company to handle his winnings.