Chess has become big business in Spain

Chess has re-emerged as big business in Spain in 2021. This phenomenon has a big flaw “Queen’s Gambit”a Netflix series about the life of a player challenging the great figures of Russian chess in the 1950s and 1960s. The success of the series has seen boards sell out in many shops and factories across the country, and has one too gave new impetus to the schools.

This is the case of Liceum, a center where Chess instruction has gone from 20% of its supply to 50% in a matter of months. Among the profiles most in demand in chess teaching are women over 50 who want to resume a game they learned as children. “Netflix has done more for chess than the meager subsidies that all the local, state and federal arbitrations have given the sport,” said Juan Alberto Ramírez, the company’s manager. in a recent article by Cinco Días.

But without a doubt, the biggest growth in demand will be led by Veneered Ferrer, a company that made a black chess board inlaid with red and yellow that featured in the Netflix series itself. The Barcelona-based company makes around 20,000 boards a year, but its current demand is doubling its production capacity, so it has a waiting list that runs until 2022.

That boom of chess in Spain is also noticeable in retail. And of course, It has come like a rain in May to save the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. “We had been closed for many months or with very poor sales. Luckily that fixed it a bit and we hope it continues this year,” explains Daniel Elguezábal, director of Casa del Ajedrez, a specialty store in Madrid that sold 1,000 boards to Cinco Días in December alone.

Despite the renewed impetus for chess in Spain, industry professionals continue to call for greater institutional support. With that in mind, they explain how A professional player who makes a career abroad can earn an average of 29,000 euros per yearwhile the Championship of the Community of Madrid hardly offers a prize of 800 euros.

Chess isn’t the only phenomenon revitalizing the audiovisual industry

The chess revival motivated by the “Queen’s Gambit” is not the only phenomenon of this kind that has taken place in Spain in recent months. After the success of the South Korean film “Parasites”, which even won the Oscar in 2020, a small Galician potato chip factory suffered boom Similar.

In one of the most important scenes in the film, the main family eats and drinks at a table. One of the products they consume is a pot of potatoes Bonilla in sight, the Galician brand. After the film premiered, demand around the world tripled, and its case was analyzed by press around the world.