Why this year watching SCC videos is "Only for subscribers"? Why not make it FREE to watch??? :-(

I think it's my fourth Speed Chess Championship, that I follow and watch, but only now, after giant influx of new users and chess popularity boom, @CHESScom made it re-watchable only for twitch subscribers. Why? Is it some new strategy to get money? Or maybe there's some other reason?

I am one of these people that love chess, but working 5-6 days per week, plus considering time difference, are not always able to watch the games. I was usually watching the few hours long video on twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/chess , but looks like this year you have to pay chess.com for watching it late:

"This video is only available to subscribers. Sub now to watch and support Chess."

Why this change happened?

Why every year we were able to watch SSC it for free, if we were unable to watch it Live or want to rewatch it, but this year we have to get $5 subscription for that??

It's even more disturbing that chess.com got rights to broadcast next World Championships, will we also need to pay money on third party platform in order to watch it, if we won't be able to watch it live? If yes, why??

I keep hearing about chess.com in context of "popularization of chess", but isn't doing something like this kinda opposite to that? Popularization, but only for the people that can watch us live or are willing to pay us money?

I am really upset by this disturbing turn of event... I really wanted to watch Hikaru vs So, but looks like I have to pay for this...

Any official statement about why it was changed like that?

What do you think about this sudden monetization?

More money = cool

I subscribed to a diamond chess.com membership and I still can't even watch their twitch stream?! WTF!?

Look for it on You Tube. Free there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFKGkyFtnvU 

Twitch is different from chess.com

@Scarlet_Evans, I don't think you've got to pay for a subscription to Twitch to watch the videos.  But even though it's quite annoying you've got to subscribe to a third party (Twitch) to watch the content of Chess.com.  On their help page they state the promise even for BASIC (free) accounts:

• Watch ChessTV

(https://support.chess.com/article/1363-what-does-each-level-of-membership-get-me)

And 

• ChessTV is all within the chess.com site, so you can chat with your chess.com account without having to sign in anywhere else.

(https://support.chess.com/article/278-what-is-chesstv)

Not quite. Twitch is integrated within Chess.com, as you can see if you click on menu Today -> ChessTV. The current live stream is available on this site, but if you click on "archive" for example you'll be directly forwarded to Twitch. 

In this case Chess. com doesn't seem to live up to their promises. They're offering content to us which is dependent on a third-party subscription.

You can watch it live with ads for free.  Usually only subscribers can watch past streams.  Unless you go to You Tube.