British Championships

[Matthew Turner]

Just to return to the question of playing the British in London, I think you have to answer a simple question. I see the costs of playing in London as something like this
Venue 100,000
Cheif Organiser 10,000
Appearance Fees 40,000 (there is no point having a big event in London without the top players)
Dinner for potential future sponsors 15,000

Total £165,000

Is this a good use of one sixth of the ECF's capital?

There is of course no doubt that this would generate feverish debate, but I think the answer should probably be yes.

p.s. I am not saying this because I would expect to receive any of the money myself

[Stewart Reuben]

My view is that spending £150,000 on the British Chess Championships in London would not be value for money for the federation, sponsors, players or development of the game when you compare that with spending £15,000 elsewhere.
Compare this with spending perhaps £1.5 million on the World Youth Chess Championships in 2012 in London and my view is that it would be very good value for money indeed. But it requires business sponsorship. See my paper on the ECF website.

The idea of having a dinner to invite potential sponsors is perfectly sound. I had in mind more of a cocktail party, but that is just a detail. It was tried at the House of Commons to engender sponsorship for Hastings, but came to nothing. The money people did not attend. We need a couple of guests who will attract such people, such as Madonna, Stephen Fry, Sting, Steve Davis, Alexei Sayle, Lennox Lewis. (all are interested in chess.) I did offer to fund such an event out of my own pocket once, but asked the BCF Board not to vote in favour of such a project unless they thought it had a good chance of success. They did not.

Stewart Reuben

[Matthew Turner]

In response to Stewart's comments, firstly I don't think the ECF has the capabilities to host the World Youth Championships, this is no particular slur, because I think the same could be said of most, if not all, of Westerm Europe. I am also sceptical about the medium term benefits which would come from hosting such an event. Have other hosts seen an upturn in chess activity - I don't know, but I suspect not.
Secondly, there is the idea that the money could be spent more effectively elsewhere - is this really true? For £15,000 we could send an extra 7 players to the World Youth, in Vietnam would this have a big impact on chess?
I expect to be in a fairly small minority, but there you have it, that's my view!

[Dai Carpenter]

I've posted on another thread a while back - not being involved in chess I may be wrong in what I say, but I can comment accurately on sport and sports development which is concerned with a number of the same issues that are currently being discussed here - namely how to increase the number of people playing the game, how to increase the standard of those players especialy juniors, how to raise the media profile of the game etc.

On one point I would agree with you Matthew is on major events - there is a long history of research in a range of sports that shows that staging major sports events fails to lead to any long term increase in participation. Please also bear in mind that such sports events attract much more media attention and youth interest then chess could ever hope to generate in this country, and are backed by National Governing Bodies etc with much more resources than chess. So I don't see the benefit of spending money on staging a big event if the aim is boosting participation and the profile of chess.

But I would disagree with you entirely Matthew on the uses of £150,000 - if you want to develop chess that is a very decent budget on which to start. I don't know much about the staffing structure of the ecf so you may have some of these people already; but £150000 is enough to fund some of the following positions for a period of 3 years or so: a development officer (with the aim of raising further money for chess), a full-time coach whose role is to to work with performance juniors and international players, a chess development officer (someone who could be in charge of say the chess for schools project professionally), a club development officer (I've outlined the benefits of club accreditation schemes on another thread)... The list could be endless depending on how you want chess to improve.

To put it in perspective - sports such as women's football, women's cricket, and women's rugby have grown in the last 10-20 years and have put professional, qualified people in place in similar positions to these. Chess in my view is falling behind becuase there seems to be very little in the way of a nationally coordinated strategy and approach to developing chess - looking at a national picture personally I doubt chess is proactive enough in linking its clubs to schools and new talent. There's a load of good volunteers, but no professional structure to coordinate it. In the approach I previously suggested you don't even necessarily need professional staff - just instructions and incentives for what you want clubs to be doing.

Cheers,
Dai
p.s. I'm not on here very often

[Stewart Reuben]

Surely one of the points is that it depends on where the money comes from.
If it comes from money within our own resources, be that the ECF or the pockets of our players and patrons, then it must show certain dividends.
£15,000 more on sending an extra 7 children to Vietnam is unlikely to reap long term benefits. If £15,000 came from outside our own resources that would be very different. The objective would be to ensure that outside source coughs up money in future years.
If it is sponsorship, then one needs to provide activity which will be of benefit first to the sponsor and secondly to chess. The World Youth is a better bet at £1.5 million than the British Championships held 10 times in London each at £150,000. There are mini-max amounts a sponsor should provide for each event. Too little and they may even get negative publicity. Too much and the additional spend is a waste of the sponsor's money. The British Championship, held outside London would be very good value for a sponsor at £50,000.
The idea is not just to run one very nice event in 2012. It is to use the event to build up so that we will be capable of hosting the event then. Something we could not possibly do in 2008. Has that event helped Greek and Turkish chess? Well, think of how far behind England they used to be and how far ahead in certain aspects they are today. In Turkey 2007 they were able to run the World Youth at a profit without much sponsorship. This cannot be done in London because the market would not be able to stand the costs.
Some events have a big effect and others not. Try for example Islington 1965 and Lloyds Bank Masters 1977. Each had an enormous impact due to the fact they were widely imitated. In 1972 the World Championship had the effect that the membership of the USCF expanded 5 fold. The long term impact for the US was less than that in England because, as it turned out, we were better prepared.
Stewart Reuben

[Gavin Strachan]

If you don't spend enough money on advertising/marketing your product (chess) then how will you capture an interested audience. Chess in the UK's image could easily be modernised and advertised to a wider community. A lot of non-chess playing people would be drawn to the game if they realised the benefits (great fun to play, modern technology, online gaming, etc oh and very social!). You don't need to be a great player or strive for greatness to enjoy the game, there are lots of u100 players who come along get smashed on a regular basis, their grade hardly moves upward and still very much enjoy the game.

Much of the marketing of chess is aimed at chessplayers - buy fritz, magazines, tournaments, etc. How can you a) attract new players b) get them hooked c) and make sure they don't jump out the "keep net" (apologies for the example but shows how simple stuff works!)

Ergo £150,000 i think would certainly help the game in a positive way, as big events do raise the profile. Many players at my club joined because of Fischer v Spassky or Kasparov v Karpov (and Short). Big events, well publisied, lots of money. The Cold War was the main marketing tool that much of it span around; the US v the USSR in the 60/70's and Kasparov with the essence of rebellion against the communist regime. We now need a new look - a global look, bringing people together into a global community. People are into brain quizzes such as the Dr Karashima brain exercises or sudoko and enjoy the excitement of poker - the gamble, risk, chance of winning big or losing lots. Chess has all of this and more.

A UK Chess Championships or the company x Chess Masters... TV/glits/glamour/stars/Steve Davis

[John Upham]

As an experiment I have been taking a digital clock plus set into a local pub and playing blitz. This attracted a lot of interest and questions leaving the persons playing poker nearby ignored.

If it were legal, we could have taken bets.

When our club plays blitz in local pubs it ALWAYS attracts much interest.

The audience knows nothing about chess but they find people playing blitz or bullet enthralling.

What can we learn from this?

John

[Stewart Reuben]

I think we are all agreed that playing chess is a product in which we have faith. But people have first to be chessplayers to appreciate it and there's the rub. Getting children to learn the game is one avenue. This has increased massively in the past 10 years. but they are very young and many give up before even leaving primary school. Wouldn't you, if you went along to a typical local chess club which is so often unfriendly towards children?
The other way must be to get chess on TV. We did quite well from 1977-1995. Since then nothing. I am currently in contact with a company interested in making chess programmes. It will probably come to nothing, but one can but try. I was asked for demographics. About 20,000 serious players, but about 4 million occasional players (TIF official estimate) and 16 million who roughly know how the pieces move (my guess). People playing on the internet or at home is just as much chess as the British championships, but we don't see it.
When did the chess public last make a concerted effort to write to the TV stations and ask for chess on TV? I think it was about 20 years ago when I managed to stir Council out of its lethargy. 100 individual letters might do the trick. in 1997 the government showed me their file on the topic of chess as a sport and ministers and civil servants were very impressed.
Stewart Reuben

[Matthew Turner]

If the ECF were to host the 2112 World Youth Championships, they would do so in the wake of the Olympics. I suspect the news by December will be how much the Games have overspent and how high profile athletes have been thrown out for failng drugs tests. In this environment I think it is unlikely for chess or other sports to get good publicity. There is a risk that we just get ignored or even worse a clever young journalist develops a negative story. For instance, you could imagine English Chess Federtaion pays £10,000 to defend the Israeli team (which I imagine we might have to do in the current security climate), while English youngsters unsupervised - this could play quite well in the Sun?

[Matthew Turner]

Stewart assert's that the World Youth Championships in London, would generate more publicity than 10 British Championships, I suspect that this isn't true, but even if it is, you have to consider the objectives of a potential sponsor. I think a truely commercial sponsor of the British Championships is very likely to be a City Institution. In this case their dividend for sponsoring the Championship would not be solely publicity generated by the event. If you look at calibre of youngsters who compete at the British, City Institutions could certain justify sponsorship in terms of their recruitment policies. Combining these two factors together makes £150,000 seem like a bit of a snip (under normal conditions, now probably isn't the best time to approach the Investment Banks!
This links in with Dai's point that the ECF may be well advised to employ someone full-time to promote chess and if we could find someone with City links to do this job it would be a very good idea. However, I still think it would be a good idea to host the British in London ourselves to show potential sponsors what we can do.

[Dai Carpenter]

I guess the thinking on here is riase the profile of our big tournaments - raise the interest amongst sponsors - raise the prize money etc offered - raise the profile of big events - get events more publicity - attract people to playing chess.

I don't necessarily think that that's wrong, I just think that people are making a bit of an assumption that chess on tv = people taking up chess. I agree it's worked for poker but that is a game that can be learned in 2 minutes and is very social to play with mates, which chess is often not. Instead I think if you want people to play chess, you need to go out and get them - it's what sports are doing and there is funding available from so many sources now to help them do this. I would prioritise this over big events. I would agree though that a publicity-type officer is one position that should probably have a full-time professional person.

[RichardPalliser]

There appears to be an assumption here that the British will remain as it is, but why not split it? A twelve player all-play-all British Championship, a la the Dutch model, or even a 40-50 player swiss, as per Germany, could surely be held annually and usually in London. This surely must have some interest to both sponsors and television companies? Furthermore, this event wouldn't have to be held in late July/early August. Meanwhile the junior championships, other all-play-alls and perhaps an international swiss still with some titled players could take place each summer at a seaside town.

[Mike Gunn]

I'm one of those who goes to the British because: 1. I can play a serious game in the morning; 2. I get to watch the championship games in the afternoon (PLUS the excellent commentary by Andrew Martin) and 3. it's usually at the seaside. If the British Championship were somewhere in London I might turn up to spectate a couple of days (or evenings) but I would give the summer tournament (sans British proper) a miss.

[Stewart Reuben]

To Matthew, and others who have written.
I must admit I was not looking as far ahead as 2112.
I am quite sure the WYC would not attract 10 times the publicity of the British championship in the UK, unless we got full TV coverage. But about 100 countries send players and that would be where the mass of publicity would be gained. For the WYC we need a large international well-known brand. Ideal is Coca-Cola who would value the worldwide exposure. I am well aware that security will be a major expense.
I could not provide £150,000 value to a business sponsor from the British Championships held outside London. In August the type of financial institutions suggested are not very active. Thus the idea of a flagship event to attract sponsors, although attractive, would be at the wrong time of year.
In 1980-2 the Phillips & Drew GLC Kings in April attracted interest from 1100 of their 6600 client base. We improved the profitability of the company for many years, partly due to the quality of the chessplaying staff they attracted.
Why bother to hive off the championship from the rest of the congress? Why not have another event, such as the English Championship? The most valuable events from the viewpoint of sponsors are often those tailor-made for their requirements. The British is very attractive at £50,000 or thereabouts. It is a crying shame that all that valuable sponsorship exposure is going to waste this year. Exactly the same applies to Hastings.
Stewart Reuben

[NevilleB]

The latest list of entries is at http://www.britishchess08.com/entries.htm. There are 190 entrants to date, still around 80% of last year and similar to two years ago. There is no noticeable increase in the number of entrants from Merseyside itself, I expect this still to come at some stage.

Neville B