Number of the Day
The Queen’s Gambit Spikes Chess Sales, by the Numbers
The Netflix miniseries has sparked a new surge of interest in the centuries-old game
1,048%: That’s how much November sales of chess sets from games maker Goliath Games increased over last year, following the release of the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit, according to NPR. Other games makers also saw demand for chess sets spike as the show gained popularity.
The seven-episode miniseries, released by Netflix in late October, is based on a 1983 novel about a female orphan chess prodigy growing up in the male-dominated world of competitive chess in the 1950s and ’60s. The show became Netflix’s most-watched limited scripted series, and its fourth biggest TV show overall. Its popularity translated into a surge of interest in chess, with search queries on Google for “chess” roughly tripling since the show debuted.
The New York Times reported that interest in chess was already higher than usual in the months prior to the release of the show, likely due to people looking for pandemic lockdown pastimes, but that the buzz generated for the game by The Queen’s Gambit was comparable to that created by the world chess championships every two years.
Not bad for a game invented in the sixth century.
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