What do we owe Pros?

Many pro sports are on a pay-per-view basis via cable or satellite. Season packages are available on the same media for individual teams. I agree with BorgQueen 100%. Competitive chess is a sport that requires no small amount of talent and effort to master.We do not want the masters of our game to be "starving artists", do we? Until we, as enthusiasts, place true value on the game at it's highest levels, why should sponsors?

Pardon the cliche but "you get what you pay for"

The thing is, chess isn't really that big, at least in the U.S.A.

The rest of the world, it's very popular; so what does this mean. Well, to get more people interested, you can't be charging people just to access GM/Professional games because people don't already understand what's going on in most of those game, charging them for something they don't understand is not going to work; most analysis of games are not for beginners. I have a hard time understanding most of it myself and I feel I have a decent grasp of the game.

Giving it away for free is a good tactic to lure people into the game; thus make it more popular and more marketable. Making money in the game should be done in other ways, tournament money, sponsorship, etc...; I understand people need to make a living and I have nothing against the pros charging for certain things, but to charge for everything (every single thing) is not the way. Think of it this way, the scores of a game (Football, Futebol (soccer), Baseball, Basketball, etc...) are published in newpapers and the game can basically be seen just with the stats given, similarly with chess moves/notations, but the MLB, NBA, NHL, etc...do not charge for that stuff (if you attend the game, then you pay).

For Chess players to monetize their game beyond the status quo they need to do something like jointly come together, unionize if you will or follow a guild model.  Then, negotiate jointly and uniformally with with tournament organizers to aggregate score sheets, suppress publicity of the sheets during the tournament, annotate them to add value, then sell that completed product post-tournament to the database companies/aggregators.

This means you also either (1) suppress live tournament coverage, or (2) modify the information flow in some fashion (e.g., you decimate move sheets by removing every 10th move, you cut between games and just show positions not full beginning to end move orders, and thereby "cover" the tournament in an ESPN highlights or red zone fashion.  This allows advertiser participation and impact during the tournament, releases results information, shows highlights, but allows you to monetize that non-copyrightable content for post-tournament distribution at a price.

The first organized tournament like this needs to be all the big dogs so that you can count on that existing market for the product.  How much in prize money would need to be on the table to make that happen?

Push back might come from ratings organizations, leaks, etc. but maybe not.

you can owe people something without a contract. the first example that occurs to me is parents. they raise us, and we owe them, even though we signed nothing before coming into the world. or, when someone sends me a private message with advice for the site, i feel i owe them thanks. or if someone is friendly to me i feel i owe them respectful and friendly treatment.

What a great thread, even if aspects of it can be 'dpruessing' to think about!

Most chess players have never interacted with a chess professional though.  So it's a more complicated case of who and how.  A subset chess players who have benefited from the work of professionals are indebted from a moral standpoint, and on the flipside, not all chess professionals care about the average chess player and want to help them.  So there's not a clear rule of give-receive.  I see how your principle could apply here though.

Twenty years ago nobody would have guessed that someday people would be paying money to watch a poker game. Twenty years ago poker was a game played at your kitchen table or for avid players in a casino. Today poker tournaments draw huge paying crowds both live and on tv. The top players are very well compensated. This was not an accident. I'm not into marketing but someone in the "chess elite" should be. Maybe that guy that was abducted by aliens will come up with a marketing scheme thats "out of this world"....or not.

 with all due respect, I meant a database of unannotated games. Annotated games by any titled player have a very real value to the amateur.

 but do you subscribe to it now? Everything I have read suggests that subscriptions are down and top players often no longer bother to annotate for them.

If broadcasts of chess matches with chess master hosts who analyze games in real time had the same content as chess books, I would understand why it would be a pay-per-view service. Chess books on match with annotations by masters are not free, so why should the live broadcasts be free.

I am not an expert in marketing and advertising, but I see chess matches as niche events that there are not enough interested advertisers to cover the royalties of the chess master hosts and cost of the broadcast services that should not disappoint (no lag, no disconnection, smooth streaming over the Internet).

Now if chess had the same following as poker back in 2004 (peak of online poker gambling), then sponsors and advertisers would fall in line, matches would be freely broadcasted on national television and chess masters would compete to be the hosts for the events.

 First off, the only value to chessbase megabase is the annotations. Openingmaster provides a variety of databases for a yearly subscription of 60 $ - much better deal and slightly better than TWIC as there is CC and other types of data collected. (Why chess.com hasn't investigated providing some sort of subscription database? well leave that for Eric to mull, but it is a good easy revenue stream)

Now onto the hard question, what model? Well since ACP isn't exactly beating down my door to be a consultant I will just suggest the following:

1) USCL league play - still in it's infant stages, if I had the time I would be looking to purchase an expansion franchise. As a team sport, you might get chess back into newspapers etc.. as it is utterly simple to report game scores and probably costs reuters etc. nothing compared to Kavalek's huffington post columns. This is a big topic with lots to it, so I will stop here.

2) Vote chess/Internet simuls/Broadcast coaching - Chess.com has this going on with their classes/videos - basically leveraging the scaleable aspect of the internet for the ability to have contact with titled players.

 Here is one Chess.com hasn't done (to my knowledge) - at the big clubs like the Mechanics in SF they used to do "mind of the master" where Gm Yermolinsky would play a visiting Gm and the audience would divide in half and each GM would explain their ideas - IM Rensch is doing his live sessions (which I think are some of the best instruction going on these days) but consider a classical time control game where the audience can sit in and vote and have some limited form of interaction with one side or the other. 

3) Blitz - lets face it, blitz is fast which means cheap from the Organizational side. Why is there not some sort of massive blitz knockout event in Vegas every year? Get 1000 Blitz players in a room playing fast and furious and espn will be there. Add tactical highlights and some halfway decent play by play.

4) Franchise/Affiliate chess clubs - As it stands now, if I fly into let's say Chicago..where would I go to play chess? For two years an internet search gave me excactly 2 church basements to play in???? The Chicago industrial league... ok, have to be a local. Chess desperately needs a McDonalds -

anyway, too much for one post already.

Your "Mind of a Master" would return to the original topic at hand when it is broadcasted for those who cannot go to SF.

I agree with franchising chess to gain ground and popularity. How about if McDonald's adapted Chess in their playground and a roaming GM instead of Ronald and friends?

Man this is going to hurt and I know it will drive us off topic, but as long as the pros are under the thumb of FIDE this is all a pipe dream.  Its not much better (maybe even worse) with the USCF.  The biggest problem chess has is that no one is driving the bus.

Chess needs a Pete Rozell to take over and turn it back into a players sport.  Once enough players are having fun, playing in events, and making a little proze money - the sponser will start to show up and soon enough chess players will be wearing 'Harrahs' ball caps while they play on a board with a log embossed on it. 

Ahh OK, I misundertood, sorry. I live in the hope that I'll be able to find decent-sized database of annotated games to help my study and fear I confused my hope with reality !

http://blog.chess.com/jrolder/downloading-score-sheets-illegal is a good blog on the subject... Check it out!

Actually, you do have that right (Thank God!). So long as Carlsen and Kasparov play outside the privacy of their home, anyone can spy on the game and report all the moves. So if it takes place in a tournament hall, its news, anyone can (and ought to) have access to it. That's how it is! I'm able to report on anything that happens in the world around me. This is why the paparazzi can get away with so much, but it's also the reason we have a free press.

Well, I am not sure that football or basketball pros provide much of a service to anyone or anything. But these sports appear to be more attractive to watch, as even the average viewer can have a pretty good understanding of what is going on.

 Dave, sounds like you're getting screwed. All the events that I've look up of his lately say GM's and IM's free. You should look into that.

I agree that the Open section NEEDS to have higher prizes because of sandbagging potential otherwise (floors do a good job at preventing this, but it still doesn't rule out ways of doing it). My problem is people being able to freeroll on my money just because they are better than I am. I am not sure that the "luster" arguement works because the events arent advertised as such. If an event was advertised as "The such and such Open featuring GM Whathisname and IM Pruess", I could see that making sense.

I agree with a lot of people here that selling advertising, not only online but at tournaments. I would imagine plenty of local businesses would pay for a banner or something or to have the tournament named after them for a nominal fee. It would just take a bit of work and business saavy. If I didn't hate chess politics and weren't so damn busy with work and my own playing, I would get involved in this myself but oh well.

Another question I have is how valuable are raw games really for amateurs?  I study some tacticts, endgames, and the general opening ideas.  A few well annotated games are good enough, it's not like I need to get a novelty or plan for any given opponent.  It seems like chess pros get the most benefit from each other's games do they not?  Or is this more a beef with Chessbase being able to make money?