Another victory for Carlsen, fundraising to help Ukraine — Charity Cup 2022 Overview

Loading

Charity Cup 2022 chess tournament, the second event of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour season, ended last weekend. Magnus Carlsen has become a winner of this series for the second time. And also, as part of the competition, there were funds raised to help Ukrainian children. Esports Charts tells you about the results of the event and its viewership statistics.

Charity Cup 2022 Results

The competition took place against the backdrop of the tragic war in Ukraine.  For the first time in the history of Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, participants from Russia did not take part in the tournament: initially, three Russian grandmasters, including Yan Nepomnyashchy, were supposed to attend the championship, but in the end the organizers decided not to invite them to the competition.

As the name implies, Charity Cup became a fundraising event to help Ukrainian children suffering from the armed conflict. Before the event, Play Magnus announced that all donations raised during the event would be sent to the international organization UNICEF, which provides vital support to children and their families in Ukraine. The tournament raised over $158K.

  Charity Cup 2022 Participants   

While there were no grandmasters from Russia competing in Charity Cup, many distinguished players participated in the event. Together with Magnus Carlsen himself, Ding Liren, Erik Hansen, Hans Moke Niemann, David Navara, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and other players took part in the championship. Moreover, a chess grandmaster Hungarian Richard Rapport was the debutant in the series, and two more female players — Lei Tingjie and the Women's World Chess champion Ju Wenjun — also competed in the tournament.

Carlsen and Jan-Krzysztof Duda clashed in the final of the tournament, and the finals were incredibly tense: everything ended in tie breaks, and the Norwegian grandmaster won the event. The victory was his second in the series, as he won Airthings Masters at the end of February.

Tournament’s Viewership Statistics

Charity Cup 2022 was held online, and the tournament was available only on streaming platforms. The event accumulated more than 755K Hours Watched in 35.5 hours being on air. The number of Average Viewers was 21.3K spectators.

The main broadcaster of the tournament was the company Chess24, which channels were the most popular with the audience. The main YouTube channel of the company attracted the most viewers: it became the leader both by Peak Viewers (12.4K people) and total Hours Watched (210K HW).

English was the main language of broadcasts, accounting for more than half of the total Hours Watched. Streams were also held in Portuguese, Turkish and other languages, including Filipino.

The tournament's Peak Viewers number was reached in the final game between Carlsen and Duda — 45.6K people.

Charity Cup 2022 did not show the highest viewership results among the top tournaments of 2022. The tournament is behind almost all other events, but it managed to outpace FIDE Grand Prix 2022 Leg 2 in the core metrics.

***

The next Meltwater Champions Chess Tour championship will be held from April 20-28, and unlike the first two events, it will be a Major. The organizers have not yet announced the name and venue of the tournament.