The Rise of Chess

If you're looking for someone who knows how to spot an opportunity and build a social media empire around an underappreciated sport, look no further than Levy Rozman. Known as 'the Internet’s Chess Teacher,' Levy has turned his love for chess into a social media phenomenon, outperforming even the big players like NBA or FIFA in terms of views.

How he got here, what measures he took in optimizing his social media presence and what his hopes for the future of the game are, is definitely worth a read.

It’s 2020, the world comes to a halt. Staying at home, distancing rules and lack of social life made people turn to their screens while looking for ways to fight boredom and a chance to occupy themselves with something else than bad news. Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix series starring Anya-Taylor Joy as a chess savant, makes waves and puts the “Game of Kings” on the radar of audiences that might have considered it old and dusty before.

With no chess students to teach, Levy saw his chance: After meticulously filtering through the chess content on hand, he found a way to offer something that YouTube creators at that time overlooked and started recording. 4 years later, life is back to normal, and Levy can proudly claim over 8M cumulative followers throughout YouTube, TikTok and Instagram while having a hand in making the game explode in popularity. Let’s focus on some of the decisions that brought GothamChess to this point.

Chess is living in a very unique microcosm: The governing international body, FIDE, has less power and reach than similar organizations in other sports, while Chess.com is a billion dollar company offering everything casual and hardknock chess fans need. It’s almost a monopolist, being the first address users land on when searching “chess” on Google or YouTube. This results in an interesting back and forth between YouTube and Chess.com. Interested users get new information and knowledge about the game through videos like Levy’s and use those skills on Chess.com while developing their game, training and playing other users or AI opponents and so forth.

Pulling further audiences into this mechanism is what makes Levy so successful: Adapting content to the desires of the community, creating 30-40 minute recaps of important games with focus on storytelling, the protagonists and the ups and downs of a chess game. He also uses short form content to lure first timers and a generally younger audience into the world of chess. To keep those and show the highest-potential players a way to make a career, there is a need for money coming in from outside of the game via sponsorships and broadcasts. That’s why there are and will be shortened, more entertaining versions of the game, as up to seven, eight hours don’t make for good TV. The whole look of the game is being overworked to reach the level of the most popular sports, where, contrary to chess as it is, following a game one glance at a time without the sound on is not a problem.

While we are still far away from an AI-machine that plays football or basketball better than the best humans on earth, chess players had to accept back in 1996 that AI will be unbeatable for even the best chess players of all time, as shown by Garry Kasparov’s loss to IBM computer “Deep Blue”. Instead of seeing AI as a threat, the chess community embraces it to find worthy opponents and improve the human game whilst creating a unique, symbiotic relationship. Speaking of relationships…

So what’s next for chess? When it comes to Levy, there are a few challenges to tackle to push chess to the next level. Making it more fun. Levy sees several challenges ahead: making chess more fun, improving broadcasts, and attracting sponsorships to bring new money into the sport. With young talent pouring in - four of the top ten players were born after 2003 - chess has a bright future. Levy even dreams of chess becoming part of school curriculums, teaching skills like humility, strategic thinking, and resilience. But his dreams reach further.

Calling it an “all-encompassing sport” teaching losing, humility, the consequences of mistakes and forward thinking strategies Levy would like to see chess on the curriculum catching players at ages 13 to 14 when they usually lose interest in the checkered board. And to create shining personalities that play the game at the highest levels, helping the sport along. Like World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Or like Levy, the Internet’s Chess Teacher.