A new idea to promote chess

Izvestia
22 February 2012

“Chess is now promoted by museums and tourism”

A contract has been signed to hold the world chess championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand at the Tretyakov Gallery. The prize fund of the match, to be held in May 2012, is $2.55 million. The match is sponsored by ANDREI FILATOV, himself a Candidate Master of Chess ranking 93rd in the Forbes list of the richest men and co-owner of the company N-Trans, who tells Izvestia’s Ilya Desyaterik why chess is gradually moving from holiday resorts and Soviet concert halls to museums.

Have you ever played for serious prize money?

Yes, I played for money, even bigger money than the current prize fund, in the early 1990s. My stake was fuel oil and my opponent’s stake was a contract. My opponent was no chess amateur and it was a gruelling battle. My hands were trembling after the game. But I was lucky, I won.

Was this the start-up capital for your current fortune that Forbes puts at 1.1 billion?

No, but it was a big help.

And now you have decided to “repay the debt” to chess players by sponsoring the championship match?

I am not returning any debts. It’s just that I have an opportunity to do something good for my favourite sport.

What is the total cost of the match?

The organisers from FIDE and the Russian Chess Federation could give you the precise figure. It’s about $4-5 million.

Moscow outbid Mumbai to host the match because it offered $500,000 more. Is that true?

Even if the difference were one dollar, the highest bidder would win. Such are the selection rules. And a prize fund of over 2 million is no small sum. Bids in chess did not move into millions until the Kasparov-Short match in 1993.

Why is there less interest in chess than 15 years ago?

The economics of chess have gone through different periods. Initially, the idea was to promote it in holiday resorts. Chess tournaments and championship matches were organised in holiday resorts, making them more popular.

Later chess was promoted by the Soviet propaganda machine as a symbol of Soviet intellectual prowess conquering phony bourgeois values. Only the USSR had a class of professional chess players.

No other countries had professionals?

Over time, some appeared in other countries, but they were few and far between. Fischer, for example.

There is no more propaganda. What now?

Now there are museums and tourism. Museums are experiencing a boom. In Dubai, a $1.2 billion branch of the Louvre is to be opened. One cannot develop new tourist centres if there is no cultural life there. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam has sucked away 500,000 passengers from the Frankfurt hub by opening a branch of the Reichsmuseum.

Where does chess come in?

You cannot create a powerful tourist centre in China or Arab countries if there is no major museum. A major museum needs promotion. The cheapest way to promote a museum is to holding a world chess championship. This is the new chess economics.

Surely the Tretyakov Gallery does not meet the description of a new, little-known museum?

Everybody needs advertising. Every country that wants to be economically credible must have serious cultural representation. If you win hearts and minds in other countries through Hollywood or Soviet ideology, then your goods start flowing there.

Russia has gigantic untapped capital. The works of painters who left Russia cost a lot. But those who stayed were no less talented. Simply nobody knows them; they are still behind the Iron Curtain, so there is a potential of billions of dollars there. They are here in the Tretyakov Gallery.

Who will see this match if chess is hardly ever shown on television?

Chess does not need to be shown on television to be popular. It has largely moved to the Internet. Chess does not need television. It used to be watched on Soviet TV before the Internet appeared.

During the last world championship match, there were tens of millions of hits on the match website. A game lasts five or six hours and, during the broadcast, we will be showing our viewers treasures of Russian art.

The advantage of chess is that a good game will be analysed by millions of chess players for tens and hundreds of years. And the games played in our match will all bear the caption: “Moscow. State Tretyakov Gallery.”

And who says that, when chess players read it, they will all rush off to the Tretyakov Gallery?
Chess players and museum-goers are virtually the same people.

How many people will watch this world championship match?

We will have two national icons. Vishy Anand is a hero in India, the birthplace of chess where there are tens of millions of chess players. Boris Gelfand has a chance to become a hero in Israel, by becoming the country’s first world chess champion.

Is sponsoring this match a one-off act of philanthropy or do you have a strategy for promoting your favourite sport in Russia?

I have no long-term strategy. But I may develop one.

Special thanks to GM Ilya Smirin for sending me this.