Magnus Carlsen – The Crown King – NRK Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule

Magnus Carlsen is the name of the aforementioned chess player, in case anyone gets fooled.

On November 30 he turned 30 years old. The last of them has been used with great ingenuity and understanding of the possibilities that paradoxically offers a somewhat impossible world situation.

When the world closed in March, it necessarily had a series of repercussions.

Including a very limited limit to the opportunities to practice the vast majority of sporting activities, in Norway as elsewhere.

Some sports still have opportunities in times of crisis. One of them is chess.

Unlike wrestling, boxing, tennis, and other dueling sports, the digital version of chess is quite close to a full version of the original practice.

We have learned to be fascinated by the sensation of a kind of closed intellectual aggression on the chessboard when the chess giants meet, a condensed situation where only thoughts are heard.

But we must also acknowledge that the lack of this is still pretty negligible when you look at the quality of the game itself.

The ingenious opening move

This brings great opportunities in a closed world, opportunities that no one is as fast or better than Magnus Carlsen. And again, this would mean you have to spend on these processes.

Unpretentious, the first tournament was called the Magnus Carlsen Invitational and began as early as April 18, with 8 of the best players in the world and $ 250,000 in total prizes.

The tournament was one of the first international sporting events after the start of the pandemic period and received much attention around the world.

“In the crisis of the crown a new world sport is born”, as the major German newspaper Die Welt put it.

No one has to wonder who beat the American Hikaru Nakamura in the final and won the first prize of $ 70,000. OR won again, as can well be expressed with such precision.

For Magnus Carlsen and his partners at Play, the Magnus Group not only hosted the world’s first major digital tournament. Since 2019, they also own the chess portal chess24.com, which broadcasts Carlsen’s tournaments.

Here in Norway, the television rights to the tournament were sold to TV 2, which received a lot of attention around the broadcasts on a television schedule characterized by crown news, reruns, and just that.

Play Magnus started in 2013 as an app of the same name, where you could play against a virtual version of Carlsen adapted to the player’s age.

When Play Magnus Group went public in October, the value soared to NOK 1.3 billion on the first day, before stabilizing at around NOK 1 billion.

For Carlsen himself, the listing gave an income of NOK 25 million, and a value of the remaining stake, which was estimated at just under NOK 90 million.

But regardless of the ever-increasing value of Play Magnus Group, it is the total universe that Carlsen and its partners have managed to create in 2020, the most impressive in this context.

2020 is likely to be the actual year 0 in the history of digital chess interest.

Game sponsor

But the most pressing need in this universe in early summer was still not people’s need for chess tournaments as online entertainment.

It was the need of gaming companies for gaming objects.

If we have already forgotten, the situation was so dire that Belarusian football suddenly became a worldwide phenomenon for a few weeks as it was one of the only leagues that did not stop and could be played.

President Lukashenko claimed that the coronavirus could be stopped with a mixture of sauna and vodka.

And that all sporting activity continues, even if it is closed in the rest of the world.

Lukashenko knew well what attention he was suddenly receiving and how to take advantage of it. The Belarusian soccer league was for the first, and probably last, an issue beyond the borders of the country. Because one had nothing more to discuss, in a world more dependent on sports than we often admit.

But this could not continue.

And this is where the Magnus Carlsen chess tournaments came in.

Carlsen is sponsored by the powerful Swedish gaming company Kindred, which offers games under the Unibet name.

Carlsen’s chess tournament suddenly provided them with exciting new items to offer to players around the world, and that in a situation where much of the world was indoors in front of a screen.

The new concept was a success. For Magnus Carlsen, his company, and certainly for gaming companies. Who had really managed to get us away from the nascent Belarusian soccer addiction and give the world new game objects?

A tour is created

Several tournaments followed in what became the Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. A total of five tournaments were held. Carlsen himself won four of them.

And it is the chess player Magnus Carlsen who is first and foremost.

Carlsen also won the only major chess tournament they managed to physically organize after the closing in March, Norway Chess in Stavanger.

The highlight of the year should remain the defense of the World Cup title in ordinary chess, or long chess if you will. Back in June, this was postponed indefinitely.

This fall, it was also clear that the Blitzkrieg World Cup, which we have become used to following this Christmas, was not going to be played this year.

But where emptiness arises, new forces enter.

Or not particularly new either. Of course, it is those who have already tried it, namely Play Magnus, who are launching an expanded version of this summer’s tour, now under the name Challenge Chess Tour.

Ten tournaments from November 2020 to September 2021 make this something of a chess World Cup, with Magnus Carlsen as the combined organizer and big favorite. The total prize money is $ 1.5 million.

It may seem cynical, and it is, as is almost all business operations at its core.

Television rights have been sold in Norway to TV 2 and NRK, while Eurosport will broadcast chess images to 60 countries and markets around the world. In addition to everything that is broadcast on the aforementioned chess24.com.

Cynical and idealistic

But Magnus Carlsen has never shown moral distress when he has a plan, whether it be cutting off the chess federation congress, signing sponsorship contracts with game companies that are banned in Norway, or traveling to Dubai to play a World Cup match. World that is now exposed.

What Magnus Carlsen is doing in the crown year 2020 is using his own position to make his own company bigger, but also to pay more attention to the sport of chess.

And it’s hard to say more than Carlsen’s heart for the base of the sport seems big and warm and real.

For the businessman who now finds ourselves anywhere other than physically on the chessboard on the upper level, he is also very active on the ground floor, where his Offerpill club is increasingly the center for talent development. in Norwegian chess at a level never seen before.

The help of a queen to a king

In his 30s, he’s not only on his way to becoming the world’s greatest chess player of all time. It is also in a process that gives it an increasingly strong influence on how the sport is played and how it generates interest and rotation.

And if his own efforts aren’t enough, he and his online gaming company also get unexpected traction through Queen’s Gambit.

The Netflix series on female chess genius Beth Harmon is said to have created a huge surge in interest in chess around the world.

And the true king of chess was given more traction. He, who in 2020 did everything right, who started tournaments, provided gaming items for his sponsor, went public, and recovered most of the prize money.

When you can’t play the World Cup, the Challenge Chess Tour will still give us excitement until Christmas. Shown by NRK. Organized by Play Magnus. As a very good and symbolic summary of 2020.

Now all that’s really missing is for Magnus Carlsen to lead the year by being nominated for an award at the Sports Gala. But a place may well cross the border, even for the crown king himself.