Austrian Grandmaster Felix Blohberger has raised concerns about the future of professional chess in Europe, claiming that the sport is struggling financially for many players outside the top 30 ranks. In a recent video, Blohberger emphasised the difficulty of making a living solely from chess, citing stagnant tournament prize money as a key issue.
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Austrian Grandmaster Felix Blohberger has raised important concerns about the financial struggles faced by chess players, especially European GMs, outside the world’s top 30 rankings. In a hard-hitting YouTube video addressing the economic challenges in professional chess, the 22-year-old Blohberger — who is also a streamer and coach — emphasized that it is difficult to “make a living with playing chess by itself.” He further noted that European professional chess players “will not be able to compete much more” in the future compared to their Asian counterparts, as tournament prize money has stagnated for decades.
Titled “Being a Chess Professional (in Europe) sucks,” the video was published on Blohberger’s official YouTube channel, where he has 3.84k subscribers. In the description, the Austrian chess champion wrote: “The point of this video is to start a constructive discussion on how to improve things for professional chess players.”
‘Things must change to keep professional chess alive in Europe’
Further in the video, Blohberger clarified that he doesn’t aim to create any controversy but wants to point out the need for changes to keep “professional chess” alive in Europe. “This video is not there to blame anyone or to put shame on anything at all. It’s simply to address the things as I see it, as a chess player living in Europe, and some things that, in my opinion, should be improved if professional chess in Europe wants to stay alive,” Blohberger said.
Blohberger has pointed out two major problems that threaten professional chess in Europe. As per him, the high cost of living in Europe and the lack of recognition for professional chess killing the future of the sport in the continent.
Giving an example, Blohberger said that while the prize money is the same for a European and Asian player in a chess competition, the value of it differs in the continents, making it tough for European players to sustain after such wins.
“If both of these players have the same rating… and they play the same tournaments… they will, on average, make the same prize money, let’s say, and this prize money is of course worth way more in this case in India than in Germany,” Blohberger said.
He added that prizes for chess tournaments and honorary stipends not increasing for decades have also not helped.
Blohberger also pointed out that Asian players are receiving great recognition from their governments while European players are awarded pennies.
He pointed out that Uzbekistan payers were awarded apartments, cars and cash prizes by the national government after winning the 2022 Olympiad gold. The All India Chess Federation (AICF) also announced cash rewards of Rs 3.2 crore for the
2024 Chess Olympiad-winning Indian men’s and women’s teams. D Gukesh was awarded
Rs 5 crore by the Tamil Nadu Government after he won the World Chess Championship 2024.
Blohberger said the European players at the same time are getting nothing from governments despite making their country proud at the Olympiad. He said that a European who won an individual board prize at the 2024 Chess Olympiad with a performance of 2800 was not recognized upon returning to his country. Similarly, German GM Frederik Svane earned individual gold on board five and was awarded just €3,000.
“I don’t think European professional players will be able to compete much more in the future, at least on the very high level, simply because there’s not enough motivation to go there from a financial standpoint,” Blohberger said.
Blohberger: ‘cannot make a living by playing chess’
Focussing on how chess as a professional sport is unviable for lower-ranked players, Blohberger said that “in chess, if you’re not in the top 30, you cannot really just make a living with playing chess by itself.”
Blohberger felt that chess has to be made more popular to improve things and rapid and blitz events can do that because in classical chess “there’s not that much happening and also the rules are way more complicated”.
He added that creating content is currently the best option for lower-ranked chess players.