'Indian chess will continue to grow'- Vidit Gujrathi calls for more major tournaments in India

Vidit Gujrathi was the men’s superstar for Mumba Masters in Global Chess League 2024.

The second season of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League created ripples across the sporting community over the past 12 days with another thrilling edition in London, and the stage is set for an all-important Championship Final between the defending Champions Triveni Continental Kings and PBG Alaskan Knights on Saturday.

Ahead of the highly-anticipated Final, the league’s Chairperson Peeyush Dubey and upGrad Mumba Masters’ Men’s Superstar Vidit Gujrathi attended a virtual roundtable with the UAE media and spoke on the success of the season.

Dubey pointed out that London as a venue lived up to the hype and built on the legacy and tradition that was started with the first season last year in Dubai. “We laid a wonderful foundation in Dubai with season 1. That’s where it all began. And London has followed up with the right spirit. It’s a great, historic city, with lots of energy and passion. As the league is maturing, we are witnessing great fan engagements here over the last few days which has led us to today,” he said.

“It’s been a great experience. At the end of it, I think it is the chess that that is winning and that is the objective of the Global Chess league. We want everyone who loves the sport to win,” Dubey added.

Also Read: Global Chess League 2024: Defending champions Triveni Continental Kings register comeback against Alpine Pipers to reach final

Meanwhile, Vidit, whose franchise could not make it to the Final this season, praised the chess community for evolving over the years, and said he is delighted to see everyone doing their bits and pieces to popularise the sport.

“I think everybody is doing their own bit. In pandemic, we started to stream Chess online and that brought a lot of new people. There was a stereotype of chess players being in a certain way, and that was broken when people saw us just chilling and enjoying ourselves. It created a very close, tight knit community and they are still following the games,” Vidit said. 

“Following India’s historic Olympiad win in Budapest, we moved to Global Chess League, and now Gukesh will be playing World Championships soon. A lot of eyeballs will be there and Indian chess will continue to grow. Everything is automatically falling in the right places. A couple more major tournaments in India might complete the perfect picture,” he added.

To further add to Vidit’s pointers, Dubey further pointed out the biggest challenge with the league, and added how the modern-day streaming platforms paved way for the Global Chess League to happen. He further highlighted the important role played by Tech Mahindra in bridging the gap between the sport and the audience.

“Over the last few years, the way the audience is engaging with content has changed. We are in the third generation of broadcasting with streaming platforms taking over. Streaming allowed for several sports to become a lot more available. Hundreds of thousands of people are just watching others play Fortnite or Minecraft. We realised it is possible to actually create a league for a sport like chess.

The challenge was to make it more widely accessible like football or tennis. And with the wonderful team at Tech Mahindra and Global Chess League, we have attained the feat using modern technology and an engaging, innovating format,” he signed off.

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