It is the only publicly traded chess company in the world. One year after it went public on the Euronext Growth Oslo stock exchange, Play Magnus now has a market capitalization of about $115 million. It now includes an online playing site, multiple teaching and training platforms, and digital and book publishing arms.Īccording to Andreas Thome, Play Magnus’s chief executive, the company has about 250 employees and about four million registered users of its products and proprietary learning programs. Initially designed as an app that allowed users to mimic Carlsen’s playing style and strength at different ages, Play Magnus has expanded, mostly through acquisitions, to become a company with a dozen subsidiaries. But the main vehicle for his business ventures is Play Magnus, a company that he co-founded in 2013, the year he became world champion. In the process, he has amassed a small fortune.Ĭarlsen has several private sponsorship agreements, including with Unibet, a sports betting site Isklar, a Norwegian water company and Simonsen Vogt Wiig, a Norwegian law firm. He has also done something that none of his contemporaries or predecessors, not even Garry Kasparov, who held the world title from 1985 to 2000, managed to do: He has leveraged his fame to become one of the chess world’s leading impresarios. Yet win or lose, the payday will only add incrementally to the millions of dollars Carlsen has earned in his career. As much as 60 percent will go to the winner. The prize pool for the event is $2 million. 24 in Dubai in a best-of-14-game match against Ian Nepomniachtchi, a Russian grandmaster. Magnus has exceeded that relatively modest goal.Ĭarlsen, the reigning world champion, will turn 31 at the end of the month, only days after he opens his defense of the title on Nov.

Henrik said at the time that he hoped that Magnus would earn enough by age 25 that, if he decided to stop playing, he would at least be financially independent. By the time Magnus Carlsen, a Norwegian chess grandmaster, was 16, he was successful enough that his parents, Henrik and Sigrun, decided to form a small company to handle his winnings.

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