Magnus Carlsen’s Chess Business: The $82.9M Play Magnus Sale

Magnus Carlsen’s Chess Business: The Play Magnus Sale and the Empire After the Crown

In July 2022, Magnus Carlsen did something no reigning chess genius is supposed to do: he walked away from the World Championship. He would not defend the title he had held since 2013. The chess world gasped. But Carlsen was not retiring — he was redeploying. Behind the board, the Norwegian had spent a decade building something no chess player had ever built: a listed company, an app empire, a tournament circuit, and now a second startup. The crown was optional. The business was not.

The company: Play Magnus Group

Carlsen’s business story begins with an app. The original Play Magnus concept was disarmingly simple: play chess against a bot modeled on Carlsen himself, at every stage of his development — from a five-year-old beginner to the 23-year-old world champion. It was a brilliant piece of branding, turning the most intimidating mind in chess into a sparring partner for amateurs.

But Carlsen and his team did not stop at one app. Play Magnus Group grew into a holding company that went public on Euronext Growth Oslo, and then went on an acquisition spree. In February 2019 it bought Chessable, the interactive chess-learning platform. In November 2020 it acquired the American website ichess.net. In 2021 came a rapid-fire series of deals: the Dutch magazine New in Chess in February, the publisher Everyman Chess in May, and the analytics platform Aimchess the same month. The group also launched its own elite online circuit, the Champions Chess Tour, which began running in late 2020 and became one of the richest regular competitions in the sport.

It was, in effect, an attempt to consolidate the chess industry’s most valuable digital assets under one Norwegian roof — with the greatest player of all time as the figurehead. After the stock market listing, an entity controlled by Carlsen and his family retained a 9.5 percent stake in the group.

The sale: Chess.com pays up

In August 2022, the endgame arrived. Chess.com — the world’s biggest chess platform, with more than 90 million members playing over 10 million games a day — made an offer for the whole of Play Magnus Group through its subsidiary Chess Growthco LLC. The price: NOK 13.00 per share, valuing the company’s total share capital at NOK 798.9 million — roughly $80 to $83 million at the time.

The premium was generous: 28.5 percent above the previous day’s closing price, and more than 44 percent above the recent volume-weighted average. The board unanimously recommended the offer, shareholders representing over 90 percent of the capital accepted, and the deal officially closed on December 16, 2022. A compulsory acquisition of the remaining minority shares followed in early 2023 at the same NOK 13.00 price, and Play Magnus was delisted from Euronext Growth Oslo. Reporting at the time noted that within the group, only Chessable had been generating a sustainable profit — but Chess.com was buying the brands, the users, and the tour, not the balance sheet.

For Carlsen personally, the deal crystallized a decade of entrepreneurship into a landmark exit. The boy from Tønsberg who became the highest-rated player in chess history had also become the founder of the most valuable chess startup ever sold.

Walking away from the crown

The sale closed in the same season Carlsen made his most controversial competitive decision. Having won the world title in 2013 and defended it in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2021 — the last a commanding victory over Ian Nepomniachtchi worth $1.2 million — he announced in July 2022 that he would not defend it again. The classical championship cycle, with its months of preparation and single-opponent format, no longer motivated him.

What motivated him was everything else: rapid and blitz events, online tournaments, the Champions Chess Tour he had helped create, and formats that felt like the future of the sport. He kept winning them. In August 2022 he won the FTX Crypto Cup, a leg of that year’s nine-month Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, on which he finished as the tour’s top prize-money earner. He had been 2020’s top earner in esports prize money overall, at over $510,000 — a figure that put a chess player above professional gamers on a list otherwise dominated by Call of Duty players.

Take Take Take: the second startup

Most founders would rest after an $80 million exit. Carlsen started another company. Take Take Take — named for the rapid back-and-forth exchanges of pieces in chess — began as a content and fan-experience platform with an ambitious goal: to turn some of the hundreds of millions of casual chess players worldwide into avid spectators of the professional game. The concept borrowed heavily from Norwegian television’s wildly successful chess broadcasts, with their emotional storytelling, live evaluation bars, and the famous “look at the arrow!” catchphrase.

Then came the twist that made the business story genuinely dramatic. In 2026, Take Take Take expanded from content into online play and learning tools — directly challenging Chess.com, the very company that had bought Carlsen’s first startup. To move fast, it partnered with Lichess, the free open-source platform that is Chess.com’s only real rival. And Carlsen himself, despite being a co-founder and major shareholder, cannot publicly promote the expansion: his commercial agreements with Chess.com, where he serves as an ambassador, restrict him from fronting a direct competitor. His own CEO has described the situation as frustrating for a founder who is “super excited about what we’re building.”

It is an extraordinary position — the greatest player in history, legally sidelined from promoting his own company because his previous company was bought by the market leader. But it also shows how seriously the industry takes Carlsen as a businessman. Chess.com’s leadership reportedly warned years earlier that entering “play and learn” would mean conflict. They understood, better than anyone, that a Carlsen-backed platform is not a vanity project.

The empire in 2026

So what does the Carlsen business empire look like now? The first company was sold and absorbed. The second is in open competition with the buyer of the first. The tournament circuit he helped build continues under new ownership. His personal brand — sponsorships, appearances, prize money — remains the most bankable in chess. And through it all, he is still, by general consensus, the best player on the planet, competing on his own terms in the formats he loves, including the freestyle chess events that have become the sport’s most glamorous new circuit.

There is a lesson in the arc. Carlsen treated his chess career the way a founder treats a startup: the world title was the flagship product, but the real value was in the platform around it — the apps, the tour, the audience, the brand. When the flagship product stopped motivating him, he did not cling to it. He sold the company, skipped the title defense, and started building again. The crown was never the empire. The empire was always the point.

The Play Magnus story: a timeline

The Play Magnus business was Magnus Carlsen’s answer to a simple question: what is a chess genius worth off the board? The answer turned out to be around $83 million.

The Carlsen empire in numbers

What’s next for the chess businessman

Carlsen’s business career is arguably still in its early middlegame. Take Take Take represents a second attempt at building a chess consumer product with his name on it, while Freestyle Chess is his most ambitious project yet — an attempt to reshape professional chess itself, with real prize money and a tour structure modelled on tennis and golf. Having walked away from the world championship on his own terms, he now competes selectively: rapid, blitz, freestyle, and online events where the appearance fees match his status. The through-line is control — of his time, his brand, and increasingly, the sport’s commercial future.

FAQ

Why did Magnus Carlsen give up the World Championship?

In 2022 he announced he would not defend his classical title in 2023, saying he lacked motivation for the championship cycle after five successful defences. He remains active — and world No. 1 — in rapid, blitz, freestyle, and online chess.

How much did Chess.com pay for Play Magnus?

The 2022 acquisition was reported at around $83 million. The deal ended years of competition between Chess.com and the Play Magnus Group, which by then owned chess24 and ran the Champions Chess Tour.

What is Take Take Take?

It is Carlsen’s post-Play Magnus chess app venture, launched in 2023 — a second attempt at building a consumer chess product around his brand, this time with lessons learned from the Play Magnus experience.

Is Magnus Carlsen still the best chess player in the world?

By rating, yes — he has been world No. 1 since 2011 and holds the all-time rating record of 2882. He no longer holds the classical World Championship title (he vacated it in 2023) but remains the dominant force in rapid, blitz, and freestyle formats.

What is Magnus Carlsen’s net worth?

No official figure exists, but third-party estimates generally place his net worth in the tens of millions of dollars, built from chess prize money, the reported ~$83 million Play Magnus sale, sponsorships (including his long-running modelling and endorsement work), and appearance fees.

What is Freestyle Chess?

A Carlsen-backed elite tour playing Chess960 (Fischer Random), where the back-rank pieces start in a randomised position. Carlsen has championed it as a cure for opening memorisation, and the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam launched as a major new property in the chess calendar.

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