The Agon ban of live broadcasting of Candidates games except on its own website

[Sean Hewitt]

Do we want Agon to make money? Do we want better sponsors for a chess world championship to the detriment of the chess fan enjoyment?

I don't give a rats ass about Agon, but I am being realistic. It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates. Meanwhile, other platforms take the product 'for free' and monetize it. I don't believe that is a sustainable business model and without one (or a philanthropist), we won't get the quality of events we'd all like to see.

If Agon weren't making the games available on their own site I might understand the argument but, as they are, I don't get the problem. It's just like the fact that the Champions League was on ITV but now it's BTSport. I can still watch either way.

The interesting thing for me is the Agon statement which claims that injunctions have been served on four chess websites. Putting aside the error which claims that the injunctions have come from Agon Ltd (injunctions are applied for by an entity, but issued by a court) I wonder in which jurisdiction the injunctions have been applied for?

[NickFaulks]

It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates.

No, they are arguing that Agon are claiming ownership of something which legally they do not and cannot own.

I wonder in which jurisdiction the injunctions have been applied for?

There was speculation here about that a few days ago. The assumption is, nowhere that will prove very useful to them.

[Michael Mkpadi]

I don't give a rats ass about Agon, but I am being realistic. It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates. Meanwhile, other platforms take the product 'for free' and monetize it. I don't believe that is a sustainable business model and without one (or a philanthropist), we won't get the quality of events we'd all like to see.

I think it is safe to say people aren't thinking about all the ways in which Agon can fill their boots at their expense and that of other chess fans. They do probably expect that is why they got the contract to host the World Chess Championships from FIDE in the first place, at least give them that credit.

However regarding your point about a business model for Agon, they have costs like any business, no surprise there. They do have "fixed costs" as you put it and variable costs (example being their infrastructure costs they said as much regarding the traffic on their web server and variability of that) incurred in sustaining the business and achieving their stated goals.

Any decent business manager would be looking to take advantage of lines of business that could generate income. It strikes me as crass that Agon don't simply syndicate their "value" feeds to other chess websites it has been done before. Chess.com (sponsor/broadcaster) did it with chess24 (broadcaster) for the Millionaire Open 2. Chess24 would I'm sure been ready to assist World Chess (Agon) make a better web interface than they currently have. At the very least pay for a syndicated feed of video of the event and other value feeds. Anyway that is business development and something a decent CIO, CFO, and COO would have seen a mile off. Perhaps the real problem here is the lack of leadership and vision at Agon, good people but no vision or common sense.

[Roger de Coverly]

If Agon weren't making the games available on their own site I might understand the argument but, as they are, I don't get the problem.

Do you not read their threat, that in their opinion, real time discussion of the games in progress, on this site, for example, was a breach of their claimed ownership rights? Regardless if whether the Champions League is on Sky or BT, third parties are free to discuss and describe the games in progress.

[Richard Bates]

Do we want Agon to make money? Do we want better sponsors for a chess world championship to the detriment of the chess fan enjoyment?

I don't give a rats ass about Agon, but I am being realistic. It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates. Meanwhile, other platforms take the product 'for free' and monetize it. I don't believe that is a sustainable business model and without one (or a philanthropist), we won't get the quality of events we'd all like to see.

Ah but how are you defining "quality of event" though? I guess on a simple level by the participation of the world's best players in a single event. Agon say the players are all in favour of what they are doing. That is not really surprising - Agon are telling them this is the way to big corporate sponsorship, so if they are right it is obviously in the leading players' financial interests and I would expect them to instinctively defend them (whether the restrictive business model is in the interests of the slightly lower tier players (albeit Svidler is one of them) who are the staple contributors to the commentary feeds of other sites is another issue).

Is it good for the "quality of event" on a broader level though? The product that Agon are putting on to date is vastly inferior to what we have seen when other sites have been responsible for official coverage of chess events. We can accept that they are trying to improve things, but it doesn't say much that most of the criticisms are that they are not even delivering on the basics - for a company that is claiming to be aiming to "revolutionise" the game.

Anyways, I've said before that I think the whole thing is inconsistent with the claimed numbers that will be drawn in. With a decent and well marketed official site, with all the things (other than the moves) that it can genuinely and legally exclusively offer, it is a very small proportion of the overall presumed target audience that will go elsewhere (probably the relatively small proportion of 'expert' players who aren't interested in what would probably be fairly and necessarily dumbed down commentary/content for mass audience appeal). And as Michael points out plenty of scope for syndicating some of that exclusive content out without even diluting the income potential of the official site - eg. to foreign language sites etc (if you have no interest in providing this yourselves).

[Paolo Casaschi]

Do we want Agon to make money? Do we want better sponsors for a chess world championship to the detriment of the chess fan enjoyment?

I don't give a rats ass about Agon, but I am being realistic. It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates. Meanwhile, other platforms take the product 'for free' and monetize it. I don't believe that is a sustainable business model and without one (or a philanthropist), we won't get the quality of events we'd all like to see.

Not everyone is obsessed with having chess as popular and rich as tennis and golf. In a trade off between quality of top chess events and ability for the public to enjoy those, many people seem to prefer what we had before Agon. Despite the lack of a sustainable business model we did have a huge selection of top level chess events before Agon; including candidates and world championships (at times even two parallel worldchampionships).
I understand what Agon is trying to do. I'm convinced this is not something good for me as a amateur chess player and viewer of major tournaments. I also understand that someone that makes a living out of chess might have a different view.

[Paolo Casaschi]

It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates.

No, they are arguing that Agon are claiming ownership of something which legally they do not and cannot own.

I wonder in which jurisdiction the injunctions have been applied for?

There was speculation here about that a few days ago. The assumption is, nowhere that will prove very useful to them.

I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that Agon was suing (or threatening to sue) each company in their own jurisdiction, so ICC and chessgames in US, chessdom in Bulgaria and chess24 in Gibraltar.

[Richard Bates]

Do we want Agon to make money? Do we want better sponsors for a chess world championship to the detriment of the chess fan enjoyment?

I don't give a rats ass about Agon, but I am being realistic. It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates. Meanwhile, other platforms take the product 'for free' and monetize it. I don't believe that is a sustainable business model and without one (or a philanthropist), we won't get the quality of events we'd all like to see.

Not everyone is obsessed with having chess as popular and rich as tennis and golf. In a trade off between quality of top chess events and ability for the public to enjoy those, many people seem to prefer what we had before Agon. Despite the lack of a sustainable business model we did have a huge selection of top level chess events before Agon; including candidates and world championships (at times even two parallel worldchampionships).
I understand what Agon is trying to do. I'm convinced this is not something good for me as a amateur chess player and viewer of major tournaments. I also understand that someone that makes a living out of chess might have a different view.

There is of course another point which is that Agon's proposed 'exclusive' business model is being justified partly on the grounds that they are offering free access to the viewer. However the likely fact is that if the principle of what they are doing is conceded, and even worse if it were to be held up in court, then it would almost certainly open up the way for a future organiser (whether Agon or another) to explore the potential for charging for access. Because that is just as valid a route to "monetizing" events as has been shown elsewhere in other sports. So it is fine to defend what Agon claim they are trying to do, but to do so one must also consider where this could lead. Some might of course be happy to defend this as well, but you can't be selective about points of principle (especially legal principle).

[Michael Farthing]

Why is everyone agonising over this. Surely Agon is a gonner?

[NickFaulks]

I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that Agon was suing (or threatening to sue) each company in their own jurisdiction, so ICC and chessgames in US, chessdom in Bulgaria and chess24 in Gibraltar.

The US legal system will be a tough nut for an offshore company to crack and I wish them luck suing a Gibraltar company in Gibraltar. My impression is that chessdom is well connected in Bulgaria, so I doubt they will get far there either.

[NickFaulks]

Why is everyone agonising over this. Surely Agon is a gonner?

I imagine they see this as a dry run for the World Championship in New York, so no.

[Richard Bates]

It seems that some folks are arguing that Agon should pay to stage the Candidates (fixed costs, player fees and prize money etc) whilst having no control over the income stream the event generates.

No, they are arguing that Agon are claiming ownership of something which legally they do not and cannot own.

I wonder in which jurisdiction the injunctions have been applied for?

There was speculation here about that a few days ago. The assumption is, nowhere that will prove very useful to them.

I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that Agon was suing (or threatening to sue) each company in their own jurisdiction, so ICC and chessgames in US, chessdom in Bulgaria and chess24 in Gibraltar.

Chessbomb, not chessdom I think, for what it's worth.

[Alex Holowczak]

It would have been naive to expect every traditional chess broadcaster to comply with the demand

You're right. Traditional chess broadcasters don't want to comply with Agon because they have a business model which lets someone else pay to put on a top class event which they then monetize. Agon want to keep the income generated by the product they have paid to create. In most non-chess scenarios, that wish would not be considered to be unreasonable.

The distinction though seems to me that if I wanted to watch a Champions League football match, it will either be on ITV or BT Sport now, and that's fine. But the BBC would nevertheless have a liveblog telling people what was going on, along with the score of the match. In cricket, Sky Sports broadcast international cricket to the UK, but lots of other websites tell people the score, and/or provide text ball-by-ball commentary.

A couple of comments:
(1) In the context of chess, do the rights apply to the video of the players moving pieces around the board, or the moves themselves?
(2) In chess, 1. e4 tells you everything you need to know, and you don't need to see the video of it happening to know what happened in the same way that someone might want to see a goal in football, or a wicket in cricket.

If we're drawing comparisons between different sports, I'd expect the video to be the "broadcast" for the purpose of the rights, rather than describing what happened in the video in words. But maybe point (2) above means that's different?

[Paolo Casaschi]

No, they are arguing that Agon are claiming ownership of something which legally they do not and cannot own.

There was speculation here about that a few days ago. The assumption is, nowhere that will prove very useful to them.

I read somewhere (but can't remember where) that Agon was suing (or threatening to sue) each company in their own jurisdiction, so ICC and chessgames in US, chessdom in Bulgaria and chess24 in Gibraltar.

Chessbomb, not chessdom I think, for what it's worth.

You are right, thank for correcting.

[NickFaulks]

Chessbomb, not chessdom I think, for what it's worth.

Yes, of course, Chessdom are keeping a notably low profile in this. If Agon can even find out where Chessbomb live they're doing better than I am.