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| The World Chess Federation’s annual budget is around £2.3 million. Photograph: Steve Prezant/Getty Images/Image Source |
I sure as hell didn't.
To me, chess is/was a stately and sometimes megalomaniacally-intense game played by thin-lipped people I would prefer not to be locked in the same a room with. The intensity was something I could credit from afar (hadn't I been absolutely nuts for billiards at one time?), but its world-stage, Borgia-esque trappings and scandal were off any radar I possessed.
Now it appears that "There remain deep reservations over how chess is run today. As one popular joke goes: it’s like Fifa, just lop off a few zeros." Who, in the end, will be president? The politics are confusing to an outsider like me, but the infighting is no joke. The Russians and the Israelis are involved. Who's fucking whom, literally and metaphorically, is part of the mix.
There's money to be made.
I wonder if the Japanese have their own difficulties in the world of Go, a board game I imagine is more complex by half than chess. But as with chess, my understandings are minuscule to say the least.
So many small ponds and so many wannabe big ducks. And always there's a financial carrot involved, though I've no idea where all this money comes from.
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia
Delete(FIFE, Federation Internationale des Echecs, translated to the World Chess Federation)
FIDE has entered into a commercial agreement running from 2012 to at least 2021 with the company Agon Limited in the management of the World Chess Championship and associated events. Agon has "sole and exclusive" organisational rights over the events that fall under the agreement. The first tournament it organized was the London FIDE Grand Prix event in September 2012, followed by the London Candidates Tournament in March 2013, and the Chennai World Chess Championship in November 2013.
EG Capital Advisors, the global holding company which, through its subsidiaries, advises the equivalent of over 3 bln USD of assets and provides retail and institutional clients with investment opportunities in multiple asset classes including publicly listed equity securities, private equity, fixed income and real estate has become the second major sponsor of FIDE World Chess Championship Match 2016 in New York.
- http://business.worldchess.com/news/2016/9/16/eg-capital-advisors-signs-deal-with-agon-ltd-to-become-sponsor-of-fide-world-chess-championship-match-2016
With respect to the 2018 games, apparently, due to an intentional lack of transparency, the sponsorship mechanics currently go unpublicized.
I suppose I could comment with a cliche about human nature, or the three poisons of Buddhism but why bother.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder how much corruption trickles down and poisons the well.
I also wonder if the corruption is due in no small part to ill understood cultural differences.