Chess will be checked for IPO

World Chess, which as a partner of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) organizes the Grand Prix series, an important part of the championship cycle, and develops a major online chess platform, will conduct an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. It plans to put 20% of its shares into free circulation, hoping to increase the level of transparency of its business, marketing attractiveness in the long term, and in the short term to attract investments in the amount of €8 million.

The London Stock Exchange published message, which states that World Chess Plc intends to conduct an initial public offering of its new shares on it, hoping to raise “up to €8 million” through it. It is planned that they will be put into circulation in November, and Novum Securities Limited acts as the issuer’s financial advisor. In World Chess itself, Kommersant clarified that this is a 20% stake, which “will not affect control over the company.”

This is quite a remarkable event. Listing shares on the world’s leading stock exchanges is already a common occurrence in the sports business. But until now it has been associated primarily with football clubs. At various venues, this practice was resorted to, for example, Manchester United, Arsenal, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Ajax, Celtic, Besiktas, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce ”, Lyon, Lazio, Benfica, Sporting. So far, the IPO procedure has not been associated with prominent sports structures involved in the organization of competitions.

Meanwhile, World Chess is a fairly noticeable structure of this kind. Founded in 2017, the company was, in fact, a key partner of FIDE for several years, responsible for organizing the entire championship cycle, including the world title match, and the owner of the commercial rights related to these competitions.

After election In 2018, World Chess left most of the tournaments on the post of FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, but its weight in the chess field is still great.

The company organizes the Grand Prix series, an important element of the championship cycle, and also develops a large online chess platform. More than 600 thousand users are already registered on it. At the same time, FIDE gave World Chess the exclusive right to assign official online rankings to chess players.

In the presentation of the company for the London Stock Exchange, it is said that, in addition, it is engaged in merchandising, actively attracts sponsors, gathering such partners as Unibet, Mercedes, BMW and Algorand in its portfolio, and implements a number of other projects. Among them are an agency for the promotion of chess talents and a network of chess clubs that is being created in major cities around the world: the first one will open in Berlin. The document emphasizes that, despite its enormous popularity, chess, which is already played by “more than 600 million people” around the world, with a steady increase in the number of users of various gaming platforms, is still “much less commercially developed than other sports.” .

Executive Director of World Chess Ilya Merenzon, in a conversation with Kommersant, noted that the company decided on an IPO not only “for fund raising”, but also for strategic reasons.

According to Mr. Merenzon, entering the London Stock Exchange will allow it to increase the transparency that is necessary “for working with large companies”, as well as “to reach a different level of marketing attractiveness and communications, making chess, relatively speaking, a part of not only sports pages, but also business sections in the press.

Ilya Merenzon said that World Chess “planned for an IBO for a long time”, but some events, including a Russian special operation in Ukraine, “delayed him”. He acknowledged that the offering comes at a time when “the UK market is not in the best shape.” However, World Chess believes that the situation will change in the future, and hopes for a revival of the market and the opportunity to make money on the company’s shares after it will only attract investors.

Alexey Dospekhov