- The COVID pandemic has led to an explosion in people playing and live streaming Chess at home.
- Twitch users watched 18.3M hours of chess in January (2021), nearly the full-year total for 2019.
- Chess.com hosts 65-70% of online chess games (57M users); it’s considered the best thanks to its strong cheating and bot detectors as well as providing detailed post-game analysis.
- Popular Twitch chess streamers include xQc, Rubius and the rapper Logic.
- The lockdown and social streaming have made chess more widely appealing.
