Internet betting group Unibet has announced that they've signed a sponsorship deal with World Chess, and will be sponsoring this year's FIDE World Chess Championship Match London 2018.
The agreement will see Unibet producing exclusive marketing rights, allowing the group to use the World Chess logo, videos and photos of the tournament. Additionally, Unibet will get the chance to participate in the First Move Ceremony. The move comes shortly after the company signed a sponsorship deal with the Cheltenham Festival.
Commenting on the agreement Unibet's Richard Ostrom said, "Since Magnus Carlsen became world champion, we have seen a large and growing interest in betting on big chess tournaments. As the leading online bookmaker in Europe, we want to be a part of and contribute to big sporting events, and we are very happy to be the preferred betting partner for World Chess both before and during the World Championship."
"We believe that this year's World Championship showdown between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana in London will establish chess as a permanent fixture in betting."
Comments
That's pretty interesting move from Unibet's side.
Usually we don't think of chess as a game of which too many bettors would be interested in staking but obviously the world's changing and we should adapt our idea about all that too.
Obviously as the Unibet guy said above the name of the new chess world champion is probably a huge part of the increased interest of punters accordingly the bookies, to be honest I didn't even knew his name - shame on me.