Support Chess.com TV

With the Anand-Topalov match, our chess.com/tv has enjoyed an incredible surge in viewership. Instead of the 100 or even 200 viewers our programs usually see, we hit 1000, then 1200. This is really thrilling news to me, indicating a good chance of advancing more rapidly towards my goal of broader tv coverage of live events and extended regular programming. It also had two immediate impacts:

- I decided we had enough interest that we should definitely cover all 12 games of the match, rather than the 6 originally intended (at the time, itself a stretch).
- Our streaming video provider emailed us with a notification that we were going to be billed for monstrous bandwidth overages.

Note that covering an extra six games would only tend to exacerbate the issue that we are getting charged up the wazoo for every extra bit at this point. But it's a good problem to have, and it's just up to us (the chess.com community) to solve it. Here's what we need to do: financially support chess.com tv. (also, David needs to negotiate with the provider; I'm on it!!)

Here are the two ways we can do it, and we will try both:

A. Platinum and Diamond member only broadcasts. We are adding coverage of three games that will be only viewable by platinum and diamond members. Hopefully this serves as an incentive for some members to upgrade to platinum, and that will cover the costs of some of these broadcasts

B. Sponsorship/Advertising. I'm making an open offer to anyone out there to sponsor chess.com/tv broadcasting. If you have a product or service to advertise, here's what you get:
- as the program begins, the broadcaster(s) will say "brought to you by ____"
- if you have a 30 second ad clip, we will play it every half hour.
- if you do not have a 30-second ad clip, our broadcasters can read a commercial message for you every half hour.
Of course, I'm not thinking that people *only* have something to sell. You may just want to make an extra broadcast available on chess.com for yourself and your friends. In which case, we (staff and members) will thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us to expand a wonderful program.
The cost to sponsor a program is 250/hour; less if I'm able to negotiate a better deal with our streaming video provider. You may divide sponsorship among a few people/organizations, but for now we intend to keep any commercial messaging to 30/sec per half hour. All sponsors will be thanked at the beginning and end of programming.

So, will the last three rounds of the World Championship match be sponsored and viewable by all members? Or will they be platinum+diamond only broadcasts to conserve bandwidth and encourage the purchasing of memberships? The next week will show. Contact me via private message if you are interested in sponsoring further chess.com/tv broadcasts.
I, for one, am excitedly looking forward to the expansion of chess.com tv. And to the remaining games of the World Championship match. Tomorrow will be my first round broadcasting, along with IM Shankland. It's a free-to-all broadcast, so I'll see a thousand + of you there!

note: we will cover with broadcasts open to all the 6 games we originally said we would cover: 1, 2, 4, 5,8, and 9.

the schedule of broadcasters for rounds 4-11 will be released shortly.

great!  Ads are annoying though. . .I personally would rather it only be open to platinum/diamond.  Maybe they can get rid of the ads.  

Platinum and diamond scenario seems more adequate.

Some quick calculations: if 1000 people watch a show and see an ad, it's a success if 100 of them actually follow the link. If 10 of them buy something, that's incredibly lucky, never happens. To compensate (!) for the $250/h spent one needs to sell 10 items each with a profit of $25. It's not just a book or smth (which costs that much or less), it's something worth at least $50 (otherwise the profit rate is too high). Summary: that's impossible.

I mean, some people might actually respond to this message, but it will be more of a donation than real barter. On the contrary, buying a membership is quite reasonable.

yep, agreed with your calculations Natalia. it is more likely to be a donation than a sponsor. if i can get a much improved rate, we may be able to drop the number and reach a better calculation. but yes, the memberships are quite reasonable, and it only requires about 6 yearly platinums to support an extra hour of chess tv.

then again, it would be lovely if some benefactor sponsored shows so that all the basic members could watch more.

hi Lisa, as far as the pay-per-view notion; someone could buy a 1-month platium membership if there were one show (or one entire event, like this two week world championship match) that they wanted to see. that's $6. does that seem reasonable as a pay-per-view substitute already in place?

ps- hopefully now you know there is a chess.com/tv. tomorrow we have special event live coverage, and the next day we have my weekly show. would love it if you took a look and gave feedback-- hopefully you'll like it!

Wow! Nice Analysis.

I presume you have studied marketing theory. Din't you?

Ok. I'm going to refrain from watching the match to conserve bandwidth.

The peak viewing numbers were in the ballpark of 1200 if I remember correctly, and certainly those watching at the beginning and those at the end are not entirely going to be the same people - I would guess that 1400-1500 people have watched at least some of the most viewed broadcasts. This gives an extreme slight improvement for the numbers suggested earlier, and assuming that the ads are well-targeted (i.e. something chess related), this might come out to... $20 profit (somewhat optimistically) needed per person buying, which is still a slightly defrayed donation.

Hopefully there can be some kind of deal brokered with the provider, and hopefully (job market, economy, etc. willing) I'll be able to do my part to financially support the site soon enough. In the meantime, I'm sure that if someone has any ideas, the good people at chess.com will be all ears.

I'm looking forward to the coverage continuing (especially the Shankland-Pruess team tomorrow) throughout the match and beyond (next event, key rounds of U.S. Championship?)

In the long run, this growth must be good, but in the short term, there are always going to be growing pains.

:)

Hmmm. I vote for it. Dpruess, Did you hear this???

algernonn, we're working on that too

oinquarki, if you enjoy it, you should watch it! this is a good problem, not a bad problem. the point of doing the shows is for people to watch and enjoy. we'll figure things out.

lisa, thanks for the idea.

wandering, i don't have precise data on turnover during shows, but i think for these long broadcasts, less than 50% of the audience watches to the end, so it's probably more like 1800. nevertheless, the math needs some help from us negotiating a new deal, which i will do on thurs.

ajchtar, :)

hsbgowd, i hear everything.

all, we've already received one generous donation towards our broadcasting. perhaps we'll be able to do an extra anand-topalov broadcast for all :)

"Our streaming video provider emailed us with a notification that we were going to be billed for monstrous bandwidth overages"

chess.com is the only site (after the official one) to broadcast the game for free. I Thank chess.com on behalf of all the underprivileged members lik Me. As I understand less bout market'n I wont comment on ur ideas. All I would like 2ask is; "If official site can show all the 12 games for free, Y NOT chess.com?"

i think part of the answer, amitprabhale would be that the organizers are spending >3 million euros in two weeks on this event... and we are not intending to lose that kind of money in that period of time ;-)

it's fine to lose some money on an event like this, as long as we are providing good entertainment, and building the tv product in a positive way for the future. but we also have to be somewhat careful about how much we throw at it. so at the same time as we work on just making this a great product, i have to start facing the question of "and how do we make it viable financially."

I am following the match sometimes here and sometimes on ICC and sometimes am watching both ..... thanks for the coverage guys !

Please remember that there are lot of us who watch from the Third world countries who do not have the ability get premium membership. But we love Chess and this site as much as any one else.!

welcome, Reb :)

slvnfernand, i remember; and as you can see, the point of this forum topic was to try to gather support for the broadcasts, so that you can see as many of them as possible.

These broadcasts are a great service. My problem is that when I tune in, I never get to see the current position, since the commentator is playing around with his analysis.

Instead of the totally useless (and rather inane) streaming chat to the right of the board, there should be a board showing the current position. At the very least, the commentator should provide an update of the current position every 15 minutes or so.

(I made these suggestions during a previous tournament broadcast, was told that they were good, but they obviously haven't been adopted.)

Honestly, being able to remove chat without having to make the broadcast full screen WOULD be a nice addition, though I realize it's not an easy one to impliment.

can't you just not look at the chat? i don't understand the issue yet.

ok, show starting in 10 min...