Size of chess audience

[Roger de Coverly]

The recently published minutes of the FIDE meetings in Baku contain the presentation by Agon. Unlike the 600 million nonsense frequently trotted out, these contain some plausible estimates of head counts.

continuing with Annex 94
http://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS ... nex_94.pdf

that paper reckons
340,000 paying subscribers at "top 5" chess sites
4.4 million loyal followers of chess events
35 million registered users of top chess sites.

I'd take the 35 million with a pinch of salt, as surely "loyal followers" would go for multiple registrations. If it's 5 each, you are down to 7 million in no time.

[JustinHorton]

You mean that people are likely to be users of more than one site and therefore are being double-counted, if not more?

[Roger de Coverly]

You mean that people are likely to be users of more than one site and therefore are being double-counted, if not more?

I would have thought that very likely, particularly when basic registration with a site is free.

FIDE's own online server has unimpressive results.

Also from the Baku minutes
http://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS ... nex_73.pdf

After 3 years of operation, 3959 chess players have completed at least one online rated game in FOA. The current number (as of September 1st, 2016) of active FOA members with a paid subscription is 2.279, representing 122 different National Federations! The ‘FIDE flag’ players with a paid active FOA membership are 480.
The top Federations among FOA members are ITA (253 players) and IND (243 players)
followed by USA, ESP, GER, FRA, BRA, RUS (64 to 95 players). ENG and GRE complete
the top 10 list

That's a very long way short of 600 hundred million. I would have thought if a commercial business set up a chess server supposedly to market worldwide and attracted under 4,000 participants over a three year period, it would consider itself a failure. You certainly wouldn't want to wreck your over the board rating system for those sorts of numbers. Although perhaps if you did, the impact would be limited by the low level of participation.

[Ian Thompson]

After 3 years of operation, 3959 chess players have completed at least one online rated game in FOA. The current number (as of September 1st, 2016) of active FOA members with a paid subscription is 2.279, representing 122 different National Federations!

That could be compared with ChessBase's Playchess server. They claim to be "the world's largest chess server" and that "every day around 20,000 chess enthusiasts log in to Playchess.com from across the globe". Wikipedia says they had over 31,000 users in February 2011. What's not stated is how many of those 20,000 players were given free accounts by ChessBase, how many have paid specifically for Playchess access, how many have got a free subscription through buying a ChessBase product, and how many are free guest accounts.

It could also be compared to ICC who have over 30,000 users according to Wikipedia. Again, no figures for how many of those people have been given free accounts, how many have a paid subscription and how many are on a free trial.

[Roger de Coverly]

It could also be compared to ICC who have over 30,000 users according to Wikipedia. Again, no figures for how many of those people have been given free accounts, how many have a paid subscription and how many are on a free trial.

This seems to suggest FIDE's attempt is under one sixth of the size of ICC or playchess. I think the FIDE server was also offering free accounts to titled players, or even just players with OTB ratings.

[John Upham]

Are we (well not me) that people who login to various chess sites without paying (because they can) are not genuinely interested in chess?

I'd guess that what matters most of all is the number of persons who would logon (and therefore be exposed to advertising and commercial offerings) rather those who logon even though they have been forced to pay for the privilege.


I've probably misunderstood the previous posts.

[Matt Fletcher]

Interesting figures - it's almost as if the 'hundreds of millions' was a slight overestimate...

As it hasn't yet been mentioned, I just went into lichess to look at their numbers and there are around 7000 users currently logged in. I'm sure I've seen low- 5 figures there before. (I appreciate it's a free site so not directly comparable to some of the numbers above)

[Mick Norris]

Interesting figures - it's almost as if the 'hundreds of millions' was a slight overestimate...