I'm joined today by our newly elected FIDE president, Mr. Timur Turlov. Welcome and thank you for joining us. First official FIDE interview.
Let's speak a bit about your vision for FIDE. In your campaign, you spoke about continuity for FIDE, but also taking FIDE to the next level. How will you balance that? What will you ensure to continue and which changes do you think you'll be making?
FIDE is a great organization gathering more than 200 territories from all over the world, and it's the well-respected and only regulator of the chess game, a historical and very prestigious one. We definitely need to keep that, and of course the previous team made a lot of achievements which we should appreciate. I think Arkady and his team did a great job, and I'm proud to be with Vishy, who will help me to make sure that we will still keep a professional approach to many specific professional items which are still on our agenda. But at the same time, I will bring my management culture to this organization, some fresh blood, more resources, and the organization will always adjust to new leaders. So I think in general it's difficult to imagine that the organization will be the same. It never will be the same.
New leader, new team, new priorities. But I still believe that most of the current administration will be able to share our culture and values and join us on this transformation.
Another big change you mentioned is this digital transformation, which sounded very exciting in your campaign. What is your vision for that, particularly, you know, for players, arbiters? What changes will they notice in the coming years?
I think the major changes in a key sport policy will be widely discussed with the proper commissions, and definitely I will talk and decide that relying on Vishy, who is one of the ultimate authority for me, because especially in sport chess, he's a legendary experience as an official, as a chess player, as a champion, as one of the most respected persons in the chess world. But yes, I think we will restructure a form of work a little bit. We will make it more, I think we will add some resources. We will add some people, some technical people, and will make everything more smooth and maybe professional business resources. And of course, I hope that that will make our commissions much more productive in producing new challenges and producing new changes to policies.
So every level of chess, you know, from players to the commissions, you're hoping to feel these digital changes.
Yeah, of course. Regarding the digital stuff, we already started with the Chess.com sports initiative. It's big and very important, and we will go further, combining all my experience in the Kazakhstan Chess Federation. We definitely need not just to create a best-in-class CRM, which we will definitely do, we also have to increase the role of FIDE in online chess in general. So the digitalization is my bread and butter. We'll definitely pay attention to that.
You've mentioned Vishy. Vishy, I think, has been in chess and really every role you can imagine, he's been there, and now in politics for the last few years. How will you be relying on him? What kind of roles would you be looking at him helping you in this transition?
In everything which is about professional chess. So that's, I respect him very, very much, and we will work together with him closely, with all commissions, with all delegates, with all experts on how to improve, continue to improve the game itself.
Yeah. So professional chess is, I guess, the peak of, you know, chess, and FIDE is placing a lot of importance on that. Right now we've got the match coming up, and I think in a lot of campaigns it was also shown that, you know, this elite chess is where you can move FIDE forward. But chess is also very much about the ground level, right? And you're showing it in schools. So are you also into like elite chess, we need to push this forward, or, you know, it's what happens in the local communities that actually is a bigger part?
I think grassroots developments and social chess development is not less important than professional chess development. Maybe top players is best for commercialization, and we will be happy to help them to earn money and monetize their prestige and success. But to make sure that we will have new champions tomorrow, that we will build a proper and sustainable community, of course we have to think about grassroots developments, and our social initiative is also very important because that will open up government funding, that will open up funding from many charities, that will open up many fundings from corporations. So all of that is extremely important for the sustainability of chess. Otherwise, if we will just be focused on very professional chess players, we can become very unsustainable and can face some challenges over some time when this generation will go. We may see much less competition in the next generation, that will be like a dying game, which we don't like.
Yeah. And you have already pledged six million euros into the development fund. How will the smaller federations that, you know, might not even have grandmasters yet, how will they feel this development fund?
Yeah, it will be much more open tournaments for them. Now, it will be much more travel subsidies to let their best chess players go to tournaments. It will be access to coaching, to grandmasters online, offline, to access professional coaching. Now, for the regions which don't have enough arbiters, we will help with arbiters' education to let them get more FIDE arbiters. I think that's the major part of this platform, but we will continue and we will try to make this fund directly available to each member federation, and we will consult with member federations on how to spend this money.
You have, of course, consulted with so many delegates running into this. What is something that you noticed that they like, something that's come up the most from these smaller federations, from what they've asked for, what they've needed?
They need just more equality. I think more the same access to opportunities like some big federation has, and they're also asking for better communication. That's one of the most essential, and we will definitely try to help with our development initiatives and also with our initiatives on development of the FIDE team itself, because if we will add more resources into FIDE, that will help to improve communications also.
