World Chess Administration: Agon Limited Appoints GM Robert Fontaine!

GM Robert Fontaine

International chess Grandmaster Robert Fontaine has joined Agon Limited, the rights holder to the World Chess Championship cycle, as chief of staff to founder-and-chief executive Andrew Paulson.

GM Fontaine, the six-times under-20 youth champion for France, becomes a principal aide as Mr Paulson implements his strategy to organise and commercialise the ongoing World Chess Championship cycles, starting with the opening Grand Prix for the 2012/2013 cycle at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in London in September.

GM Fontaine has won a number of international chess tournaments over his playing career, including Las Vegas in 2006, Stockholm in 2007 and Paleohora in 2009. He became a Grandmaster in 2002 and a member of the Olympiad chess team in 2004. He is also known as a presenter for Europe-Echecs, where he interviewed champion players and politicians for video reportage on the world’s leading chess events. 

Agon Founder Andrew Paulson

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Sponsorship Potential of Chess Untapped: Agon Gets YouGov Survey

Press Release: Chess has been under the radar for the last 40 years since Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky fought the Cold War for us in Reykjavik. But outside the glare of the media spotlight chess players now make up one of the largest communities in the world: 605 million adults play chess regularly – a number comparable to regular users of Facebook.

According to authoritative polling organization YouGov, across varied national demographic profiles (US, UK, Germany, Russia, India), a surprisingly stable 70% of the adult population has played chess at some point during their lives. Even if they played as children but left it behind as they grew up, they still retain a deep admiration for the game.

Across the board, chess players and non-players alike rank chess significantly higher than any other game or sport for attributes such as intelligence, sophistication, strategy, perfection and complexity confirming top branding agency Pentagram’s view: “Chess is about Thinking and Winning.”

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Media Blitz, Corporate Strategy to Make Chess Super-Popular!

Andrew Paulson - Chess Vision

Leading design agency Pentagram has been hired to rebrand the World Chess Championships, after the World Chess Federation (FIDE) accorded the commercial rights to the sport to technology entrepreneur Andrew Paulson.

Mr Paulson struck the deal with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of FIDE, to host the championships and provide long-term commercial structure for the game, with an increased prize fund of 5.4 million euros, according to a latest press release.

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