Tuesday, August 03, 2010

How to "Sell" Chess

Though chess cannot compete with poker on television, it does rather well online. In fact, chess is almost ideally suited for the Web, which is one reason why chess sites and online activity have boomed. Reasonable estimates are that there are millions of people worldwide who play chess online.

Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, a Michigan marketing company, said that chess had something that marketers want. “In the marketing world, the buzz is all about creating community,” she said. “And chess has a natural community.”

Phillips compared chess to Farmville, the online game developed by Zynga. But, she added, chess “is the ultimate game, you don’t have to invent it.”

Given the popularity of live chess events, and the global and regional audiences for many of them, it would seem possible to sell advertising. One model might be the live telecasts of baseball games used by ESPN, in which every half inning, there is an advertisement.
Full article on the Gambit Blog

2 comments:

jane said...

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millie said...

Nice blog. There is a strange juxtaposition, I think, between the recent G-star Raw event in nyc, and the world chess championship. For the Raw event- an admittedly meaningless game- I was able to get fantastic coverage- live video feed and GM commentary from Kaspy- while for the WC match I had to follow it on chessbomb move by move as though it were happening in another century. Kirsan needs to go- chess needs corporate sponsors- I envision it having the same money and prestige as the PGA tour or tennis- if only we can get this corrupt russian mobster out of power.