The hours of views of chess streams on Twitch have grown 21 times over the year. All thanks to the "Queen's Move"

The chess boom continues in Twitch. In February, the hours of views of streams on the chess theme jumped 21 times compared to last year. This was largely due to the success of the TV series “The Queen’s Move” released at the end of October.

“The Queen’s Move”

According to their calculations, in February 2021, viewers watched over 21 million hours of chess streams on Twitch. Chess has never been so popular before. For comparison, a year ago, the hours of views of these streams were only about 1 million.

Analysts explained this popularity by two factors:

• cooperation of a major chess portal Chess.com with Twitch in June 2020. Then the companies held a series of PogChamps online tournaments, in which many well-known streamers and recognized chess experts participated. Thanks to the partnership, stream views have grown to about 13 million hours, but not for long. Already in July, the clock dropped to 6 million, and by October it had sunk to 3 million.;
• It was possible to interest the audience in chess again with the release of the series “The Queen’s Move” at the end of October. At the center of its plot is the story of a child prodigy Beth Harmon, who wants to become the best chess player in the world. Interestingly, although four months have passed since the release of the series, views of thematic streams continue to grow.

The 10 most popular chess streamers on Twitch in February 2021 and the number of viewing hours by month
Now the chess category ranks 17th on Twitch in terms of the number of hours viewed.

The first place went to the platformer Just Chatting (235 million hours), the second — League of Legends (144 million hours) and the third — Grand Theft Auto 5 (135 million hours).