'I'd love players to be mobbed like IPL cricketers': Esports eyes mainstream appeal
Mike McCabe Chess in Esports: The odd game out Paris was never the plan An IPL-sized ambition Join conversation View All Comments → Share your
Mike McCabe Chess in Esports: The odd game out Paris was never the plan An IPL-sized ambition Join conversation View All Comments → Share your thoughts in the comments Post Comment Be respectful · TOI community guidelines There is a chessboard on the big screens at the Esports World Cup 2026 in Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, surrounded by the production, noise, and visual language of an event built around competitive gaming. For Mike McCabe, that is not an oddity. It is a glimpse of where esports is heading.Chess was added to the Esports World Cup in 2025 and is back in Paris this year, with the 2026 tournament carrying USD 1.5 million prize money. The field includes players such as Magnus Carlsen, Alireza Firouzja and India's four Grandmasters - Arjun Erigaisi (Gen.G Esports), Nihal Sarin, Aravindh Chithambaram, Pranesh M (all S8UL Esports)The game is also the obvious outlier in the EWC programme. It has been played competitively for centuries. Its rules did not emerge from a game publisher. Its stars did not grow up inside the esports industry.And yet, sitting alongside the other titles in Paris, McCabe believes chess fits. “For us, what qualifies as an esport really comes down to the community and the ecosystem,” McCabe, COO and Deputy CEO of the Esports Foundation, told The Times of India in Paris on the sidelines of the Esports World Cup 2026.“And so when we look at any game that people are playing digitally, if there's a really strong competitive ecosystem, there's organised events, there's rankings, there's an understanding and there's an interest from people to watch and spectate, then it can live within the world of esports.”McCabe isn't suggesting that chess has somehow crossed over and become a video game. That isn't really the point. What has changed is the way the EWC is looking at the game.For him, the question isn't whether chess looks like Rocket League or League of Legends. It is whether people play it competitively, whether there is an organised circuit around it, whether rankings and rivalries matter, and, crucially, whether people want to watch.That puts chess in an interesting place in Paris. It doesn't have to shed its history to sit alongside the newer games. It can arrive with all of it - the centuries of tradition, the familiar board, the Grandmasters - and still be part of this very modern, very loud version of competitive sport.And perhaps that is what makes chess more interesting to the EWC than simply being another title on the schedule. It tests how far the definition of esports can stretch without losing what makes the game itself recognisable.“What's unique about chess versus all the other esports, the other 23 games that we include in the tournament, is that it has a heritage that goes way beyond any of us and any of the world of traditional digital interactive entertainment,” McCabe said.“So it really is unique in that way.
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