"Mishra has an abundance of opportunities even without sponsorships..." — Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana

World's No. 3

“I understand that the first desire, the first priority of a chess player is to be able to continue their chess career, especially at a young age, with adequate coaching to not have to always be crunched for money.

From Mishra’s point of view, as a young American player, maybe he doesn’t get any support in terms of sponsorships. I don’t know, of course, but I’ll take his word for that. But there’s still an abundance of opportunities even without that.

And just off the top of my head, he plays the US Championship which has a very attractive prize fund. He plays the US Junior Championship which actually has a quite attractive prize fund. And he maybe even has a great equity because he’s one of the favorites along with Andy Woodward to win it. There’s also the American Cup, which he plays consistently.

And based on those three tournaments, it’s of course hard to win one of them, not to mention all of them, but if you theoretically win all of them, you’re making over 100 grand just based on those three tournaments.

We could theoretically have the same thing as in India or Uzbekistan in the US. We do have the economy for it, but we don’t have the level of interest. We’re not football. We’re not basketball. That’s just the reality.

We have a great chess scene. But true, you don’t have the money of India if that’s what you’re aspiring to. If you’re expecting to immediately from your teenage years just get half a million dollars a year in corporate sponsorship. Well, it’s unlikely.

If you compare it to college sports in the US… I mean, I don’t know how many people are watching college basketball or college football, but it is probably millions of people. And people who watch the US Junior’s Chess Championship is probably like a thousand.

So, it really is ‘apples and oranges’.”