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Unlike any other professional sports I know of, everyone seems to be able to broadcast chess world chess championship online.

That raises the question, are they making any money from media coverage? Can't they sell exclusive coverage to selected media?

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    BTW
    – leftaroundabout
    Nov 28, 2018 at 1:01
  • @leftaroundabout By the way... You just made my day! Thank you so so much!
    – Lynob
    Nov 28, 2018 at 1:23
  • @leftaroundabout question edited, i switched to raises the question :) I'll never say begs the question ever again!
    – Lynob
    Nov 28, 2018 at 1:33

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FIDE have sold the rights for the current world championship cycle to Agon. Given the very high levels of dissatisfaction with Agon it is unlikely that the contract will be renewed and the rights will revert to FIDE. There has been discussion of this on chess.com here.

Note that the moves of the game cannot be legally protected via copyright laws etc. Only the live pictures of the players playing the games can be protected like that. This has already been tested in the courts in several countries including the US (the most lucrative market) by Agon for previous matches.

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    The second paragraph wow! They can't force the media at least not to stream the game or 24h or so? Delay other's coverage? Just at least to gain some money from the live event, because like right now there's this the official site worldchess.com, but there's no need to pay for it, if kasparov is analyzing on St louis youtube chess channel for free live, and other super GMs are analysing on chess.com channel. So worldchess.com seems like a failed investment
    – Lynob
    Nov 26, 2018 at 20:05
  • I'm sure Agon considers worldchess.com to be a "necessary expense". The real revenue comes at the venue, where they can collect huge ticket prices from rich tech moguls who like to rub shoulders with supergrandmasters, and advertising revenues from companies that want to sell to rich tech moguls.
    – pokep
    Nov 29, 2018 at 18:29
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    @pokep "The real revenue comes at the venue, where they can collect huge ticket prices" This is just wrong. There is room for a total of 200 spectators at the venue they chose. For the playoffs ordinary spectators were charged about $150 and VIPs $600. For the 12 days of standard play the prices were about two thirds of that.
    – Brian Towers ♦
    Nov 29, 2018 at 23:27

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