Play Magnus AS (PMG-ME) – NRK and TV 2 buy the Norwegian broadcast rights to the Champions Chess Tour

“Our vision is to develop chess into an international TV sport. The agreement with NRK and TV 2 gives us important revenue, but even more valuable is their joint commitment to chess. Their expertise in broadcasting chess on TV is important for our work to commercialize the sport”, says Arne Horvei, Tour Director in Play Magnus Group.

The Champions Chess Tour was started as a response to the Covid-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020, when all physical chess tournaments were cancelled. The first season, which went by the name Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour, was the first professional online chess tour and became a great success. The tour included 5 tournaments, and 25 of the world's best players participated. The tour reached millions of unique viewers on various streaming platforms and TV.

In the 2021 season of the Champions Chess Tour, which runs from November 2020 to September 2021, Magnus Carlsen and the world’s top players will compete in a total of ten tournaments for a prize fund of USD 1.5 million. The games will take place online on www.chess24.com.

The agreement with NRK and TV 2 is for the entire season and includes an option for the next season. NRK and TV 2 will divide the tournaments between them, where the first tournament, running from 22 to 30 November, will be shown by TV 2 Sport 2.

“For TV 2, it was completely natural to continue investing in online chess after the good experiences we had with the first season. We have collaborated with NRK on the rights to many different sports lately, and are happy that we can cooperate in providing exciting chess experiences for Norwegian TV viewers in the coming year. The Champions Chess Tour is perfect for this”, says Vegard Jansen Hagen", sports editor at TV 2.

“At NRK, we have traditionally primarily focused on the World Championships. At the same time, chess has gone digital in record time, and this year's tour was of high quality and showed a lot of excitement. We know that our chess broadcasts are very popular, and we look forward to developing our chess studio to also cover digital tournaments. We are confident this will be a spectacular experience for both players and TV viewers”, says Egil Sundvor, sports editor of NRK.

Play Magnus Group offers services where everyone can play, watch and learn chess. The group’s services consist of the Play Magnus App Suite, chess24, Chessable, and CoChess, in addition to the Champions Chess Tour.

“Champions Chess Tour is important for our company’s growth as there are great synergies across the services. The quality stamp the tour now receives through this agreement with TV 2 and NRK is also important in our work to distribute the tour in the rest of the world, says Andreas Thome, CEO of Play Magnus Group.