There is plenty of room for all of Chess.com, Chess24 and Lichess to exist.
Lichess has the best platform to play on and is free to use.
Chess.com is a business. As such they want to earn money.
However, without a large, online chess community there will be no subscribers.
The amount of effort chess.com has made to sponsor events, streamers etc.
is tremendous.
Making a living as a chess professional is tough.
Streaming/YouTube has opened the field somewhat: it is no longer
required to be in the world top 20 to make a living in the field of chess.
The Chess24 initiative is without doubt inspired by Chess.com.
Chess24 gives yet another way for chess players to earn money.
Via Chessable (owneed by Chess24) players can sell chess online book/booklets.
If Hikaru has a clause in his contract with Chess.com, that he can't play on Lichess - then the just can't play on Lichess. That's simple.
Would Nike be happy if Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo suddenly appeared in Adidas shoes?
It works the other way too: Wen did you last see Magnus play on Chess.com?
[I am aware that Magnus as owner/investor in Chess24 makes his own rules - and plays on Lichess]
Lichess is a platform though, not an accessory. I think a better comparison would be, would Nike be happy if Ronaldo played in a tournament on a field owned by Adidas, in a world in which Adidas is a nonprofit company giving shoes to anyone who wants them.
The answer may very well still be "no, they would not be happy," but I bet the public reaction to being forbidden from a public tournament would be different than if he were just punished for wearing the wrong shoes one day.
That said of course a contract is a contract, and it's probably something Hikaru should have considered in taking it. He likes to push the envelope though, which is respectable in its own right. I'm happy to just watch the drama with popcorn in hand. (After all, he's doing this for content right? he's shrewd, surely considered the positives and negatives.. don't underestimate what he stands to make from content, it could very well compete with what he gets from sponsorship, for all I know.)
If we want to use sports analogies we don't have to use Nike and Adidas as stand-ins, golf is undergoing this right now, between the PGA and LIV tournaments, and members with exclusivity clauses in their contracts.
LIV doesn't forbid their golfers from anything, as far as I know. It's the PGA that banned LIV golfers, not the other way around. LIV golfers still compete in non-LIV, for-profit tournaments that aren't part of the PGA Tour.
Or the 80's USFL (United States Football League). But these alternative leagues do kind of color the analogy in a way that might be slightly muddying -- I mean, come on, the PGA and NFL are the prestigious competitions in the eyes of the public. Is one of Lichess, chess24, or chess.com an assumed pretender?
It'd be more like if Lichess were funded by Nazi gold or something, and the person funding it was trying to do so because they want you to forget they stole a ton of Nazi gold.
PGA isn't behaving this way for moral reasons, but it's an extra component to that situation which makes this harder to analogize.
It's not just Hikaru btw. Pretty much all of the chess.com sponsored streamers will specifically avoid mentioning lichess directly. I suspect it's in chess.com's default sponsorship contract.
> Lichess is a platform though, not an accessory. I think a better comparison would be, would Nike be happy if Ronaldo played in a tournament on a field owned by Adidas, in a world in which Adidas is a nonprofit company giving shoes to anyone who wants them.
I see your point. Chess played on the internet is an e-sport.
So let's compare it to Fall Guys and Stumble Guys.
If a streamer is paid to advertise Stumble Guys, Kitka Games would be annoyed
to see Fall Guys being played.
Those are competing games, though. In this case the game is the exact same game.
It'd be more like if you could chose to play CoolGameThatPeopleLove on for-pay servers owned by a company known for sponsoring a bunch of really good players who play exciting games and who you would _love_ to have a chance to play against, or play on community-run server with people who are great, sure, but they're just randos on the internet just like you. You can either pay and feel like you're part of the big league, even if you'll never play the big players yourself, or you can pay nothing and just play the community because you don't care about big name players.
But then a big name player who you could never hope to even accidentally play decides "fuck it, why not?" and starts streaming themselves playing on the same free server you play on! That's amazing!
But not for the sponsor: the whole reason they sponsored this person is because they were very intentionally (through their sponsor contract) made unavailable as an opponent to the world at large, effectively using them as an incentive to join the paid platform. It directly damages the paid service if that player even connects to the community service under their public, adored, identity.
(Crucially in this setting, no one "owns the game", instead they "own" part segments of the player base)
I've never had anything against chess.com, and I used to be a premium member but have since moved to lichess.
I think that the chess world could do with more money so I have nothing against a site providing a revenue stream, even if their actual aim is to profit themselves.
It would be disappointing if chess.com are engaged in clandestine anti-lichess behaviour. There might already be some information out there that I'm not aware of.
Hikaru is the biggest name in chess streaming. If he's signed an exclusivity contract with chess.com that would be unfortunate, but whatever it's just one person. If chess.com have started to to add exclusivity into all of their streamer contracts then that would be much more unfortunate. It's seems likely that they do have other exclusivity contracts, perhaps Gotham or the Botez sisters. Although you could argue that "they have the right", by a similar vein we have the right to hold it against them.
> It works the other way too: Wen did you last see Magnus play on Chess.com?
Actually, I don't get your point here. Ideally players would be free to make their own decisions on an ongoing basis, which is what we assume Magnus is doing.
>> It works the other way too: Wen did you last see Magnus play on Chess.com?
> Actually, I don't get your point here. Ideally players would be free to make their own decisions on an ongoing basis, which is what we assume Magnus is doing.
In this respect Magnus doesn't think like a player.
As owner/investor of Chess24 why advertise Chess.com?
He sticks to Chess24 and once in a while to Lichess.
Who broke the news that Magnus wasn't going to play Nepo?
Chess24 of course - not a coincidence.
> Would Nike be happy if Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo suddenly appeared in Adidas shoes?
Back when Nike Vaporfly came out and the other shoe manufacturers de facto didn't have an answer yet, you would see e.g. Puma-sponsored athletes in Nike shoes. It's simply better for Puma to have Puma athletes win (quietly) in Nike shoes than to have them lose in Puma shoes.
Michael Jordan famously had in his contract with the Bulls a "for the love of the game" clause which entitled him to play in any game that he wanted to.
A lot of athletic contracts would forbid athletes from playing other sports or doing certain other strenuous activities - they were designed partially to try to avoid players injuring themselves doing something other than their contracted sport, and partially to prevent players earning money off their image outside of their team.
Jordan had a clause specifically exempting him from any restrictions around playing basketball - by his contract, he could play basketball in any league, or even any scrimmage, exhibition, or pickup game.
In the Go world it is quite common for streamers to rotate between the different servers. It adds a layer of interest since each server has a different pool of players with different styles in general. For example, PandaNet (IGS) is known for hosting passive, territorial players, while Tygem is known for aggressive players that fight over everything, while OGS is known for principled players. Sometimes you even see streamers playing on one server while using other servers’ clients for reviewing a game they played on a completely server.
I take it from this discussion that this is not so common in the chess world. If that is the case, then chess is missing out.
Nike wouldn't be happy either. Probably won't make a fuss because it is bad for PR, but they will definitely take note and it will come back when it is time to talk money.
Lichess has the best platform to play on and is free to use.
Chess.com is a business. As such they want to earn money. However, without a large, online chess community there will be no subscribers. The amount of effort chess.com has made to sponsor events, streamers etc. is tremendous.
Making a living as a chess professional is tough. Streaming/YouTube has opened the field somewhat: it is no longer required to be in the world top 20 to make a living in the field of chess.
The Chess24 initiative is without doubt inspired by Chess.com. Chess24 gives yet another way for chess players to earn money. Via Chessable (owneed by Chess24) players can sell chess online book/booklets.
If Hikaru has a clause in his contract with Chess.com, that he can't play on Lichess - then the just can't play on Lichess. That's simple.
Would Nike be happy if Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo suddenly appeared in Adidas shoes?
It works the other way too: Wen did you last see Magnus play on Chess.com? [I am aware that Magnus as owner/investor in Chess24 makes his own rules - and plays on Lichess]