I'm here with one of the FIDE presidential candidates, Timur Turlov. Hello Timur, good to see you.
It's been a very interesting few days in the world of chess right now and you are in the center of it. Just so that I know where you are, I think the tournament that was happening was the World Universities in Astana. So just, I think it ended yesterday.
Yes, in Almaty. It was a really very beautiful and I think first tournament of this kind, big, successful, with strong support, with beautiful fair play, in a beautiful venue in one of the largest universities of Almaty in Kazakhstan. And we seen so many friends in this tournament, so many visitors, and then so much attention also from our deputy prime minister who welcomed this tournament. And we had the minister of higher education and some with major of our city. So it's a beautiful tournament, very representative and with a lot of beautiful chess games.
Okay, that's wonderful. You know, we have roughly around 25 minutes. So I want to just tell you the topics that I would like to speak about, so we have an idea. So I've prepared that I would like to talk about all the ideas that you have proposed in your campaign which is related to the improvements in the world of chess. So digital transformation, chess in education, global development of chess, financial stability, supporting players and professionals, equality amongst federations, the calendar of the world of chess, female representation, social programs and governance. These are 10 points which you mentioned. I would like to talk about them. So we know where, you know, if we could go into each point, but before that, your work as the Kazakh Chess Federation president and what you've already achieved, this is something that has been mentioned in your sort of manifesto. And there are four points which are essentially mentioned. The first one is digital transformation. Would you like to speak a bit about the digital transformation that happened here?
Actually, every national federation, every active national federation, usually has to govern a very big amount of tournaments, players, arbiters, coaches, and of course you need a good CRM platform to manage all of them. So you need a strong digital platform for different reasons, to better understand who is playing and how different players perform, how different chess clubs are being developed in your country, and what's the difference between different chess clubs, or what chess club will be suitable for each parent, for each participant, because some of them do some elementary level and beginners level, some of them do intermediate, some of them can do some grandmaster approach and help for further development. And I think a good, strong federation should have at least knowledge about what happens in chess in each country and should help to navigate any participants of these clubs, to governments, to some charities who are interested to support with at least voluntary accreditation of chess clubs.
And we also developed a platform to help to better understand your resources about the calendar. So what happens in the country in the world of chess, which local tournaments, federation tournaments, how this calendar aligns with each other, how some international events align with the national calendar, to make sure that everyone is on the same page. So every chess club should be aware of this calendar. And we also try to build some fintech features for chess clubs to help, for example, to get some, if that's a paid tournament and you need to register with some money, so we try to help to accept some credit card payments to help to facilitate this process for chess clubs and federations in case of tournaments.
And also, of course, we need to track the performance of each arbiter, of each coach, to better understand who is busy, who is not busy, who can we appoint to some events, whom we can offer some job. So the better knowledge of your community is very beneficial for better structuring of all of that and to make sure that we will be truly transparent for any sponsors, external sponsors, to governments who also could be interested in supporting transparent and efficient organizations.
We financed, I think I'm still the major sponsor of the Kazakhstan Federation as Freedom Holding, our company, but we try to make the federation more sustainable. And of course also our government sometimes helps us with venues, with some additional resources on some at least big tournaments. They really help us with some at least non-monetary stuff. So we don't receive money themselves, but we receive a lot of contribution in kind, with different assistance from transportation to some sort of help to arrange the venue to make it beautiful and so on.
But we are also running this privately funded platform for support of development of talent with youth players and professional teams, women's team, men's team. And we completely understand that even if you have a lot of talent, even if you are running such initiatives like chess in school, you still need to, at some moment when talent with chess players, young chess players, started to open up and perform well in their ages, they still need access to good coaches, to grandmasters, and sometimes this could be expensive and not all parents can help to finance this. So we also try to provide vouchers to pay for coaches.
And also, we built this digital platform for our federation to help to make some administration of this allocation of coaches, managing their timetable, and also tracking some performance of that. Now, we also try to manage our vouchers, some travel vouchers, if someone wants to go to some international tournament and they still have some allowance from the federation for compensation of their travel needs. We also try to do this in our platform. And in the end of the day, in my opinion, this should become truly for everyone who plays chess, professional or just does some amateur. We want to keep chess ID as an identification of players on the national side, then for more professional players to let them be rated with FIDE ID.
And of course, we also now work hard on how to develop some educational part of this platform to empower some chess clubs, to empower our local regional federations with some instruments to help to develop young players with software solutions, with some textbooks. And I believe that we should also participate in development of a gaming platform for national federations to make sure that we will not stay away from this digital growth, because the digital growth of chess is huge. And if we will govern only offline events, so our authority of FIDE will continue to decline. Now FIDE is very influential up to this moment, but if we will not catch up for now, we will decline from that position. We definitely need to become much stronger in identification and management and helping to govern all the online world of chess.
And I'm sure that FIDE should develop a lot of different instruments, starting from biometric identification of players, which is simple technology, which is very familiar for all fintech players. And we did our own biometric platform for our fintech solutions. And in Kazakhstan, for example, we did biometric identification for more than 12 million people last year. So it's very feasible, it's not expensive. And we definitely can continue development, it will be much cheaper even than to send SMS, if we will build this properly. So it will be, I think, a fair collaboration between FIDE and some commercial platforms. Our goal is not to do business, our goal is to unite the community and create some common rails for this community, identification rails, help to develop anti-cheat, help to develop the social part of chess, help each federation to be more operationally efficient. I think in terms of digital transformation, that's I think my key idea of this initiative.
Mhm.
Well, I wanted to talk about your role that you played in the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, but I think through your answer we also got some insights into what you would like to do in FIDE as well if you did become the president. That's very interesting. You know, one of the things that has happened is that you were supposed to be the deputy FIDE president. And then of course Arkady Dvorkovich decided to step down and you announced your candidature for FIDE presidency and Vishy Anand would be the deputy president if you won. How did this come about and your thoughts there?
Even when we started this discussion with Arkady before, we realized that FIDE needs these digital advancements. And with my strong experience building and developing, I think, the largest digital bank in Kazakhstan and a digital ecosystem servicing more than half of the population in our country, we definitely have the skills, we have resources, we have people. We know how to build strong and very diversified, very complex digital platforms. That was my initial ambition, to help FIDE to build this platform as a deputy of the deputy president in the Chess Federation.
And then I think that was, after some discussion with the team, after some discussion with the community, with my friends from other chess federations, I decided that if Arkady stepped down, I think he did a lot of great stuff for chess and he contributed much for the development of FIDE and I appreciate that very much. So if he will not be able to continue to run, I hope with all my experience managing chess, with all my experience building and managing digital ecosystems, I think maybe I am the right person for this moment to help FIDE to become much more digital and to put it to the next logical stage. And I'm very proud that Vishy Anand joined me on this journey, because I know that he originally served as a deputy president last term.
But we agreed that it would be great if he will stay together with me to help me to defend everything achieved already and help to move it forward, because I definitely need a very strong chess professional in my team to help with the governance of professional chess. And he is, I think, a perfect match for me because he's one of the most respectable persons in the chess world overall. And I think we will complement each other very efficiently. I will help with some management, governance, finance, digital transformation, and he will help to keep integrity and professionalism in the community to make sure that we will keep our commitments and will be able to save and develop the legacy of our foundation.
Wonderful. And you know, going through the pointers, one of the things that stood out for me is where you mentioned, I mean, financial stability for FIDE. I think it is one of the key things. Currently, Freedom has been one of the main sponsors of FIDE. And how do you see it in the coming days? Because FIDE needs more stability. You mentioned that every federation should get meaningful support while helping build sustainable sources of income so that long-term growth does not depend on a single funding partner. And this has been a struggle for chess in general. What are your ideas there?
No, we will start with the point that a single partner sometimes is better than no partner at all. But of course, that's not our dream. And I will come as a financial backstop for FIDE. And I will be happy to help the federation to develop and do some developments for many national federations. I know that that's a marathon, so more than three years. We invested a lot of money into our country, into some global FIDE events, and we see how the perception is getting changed, because we see some very great global companies getting into sponsorship. And even in the last couple of years, there were a lot of huge wins and a lot of companies from, I don't know, top 100 joined some sponsorship now of FIDE.
So Google was a strategic partner for the last match. We expect very, I think we will expect some further interesting announcements from FIDE about some other large company sponsorships for the next match for champion, which will happen very soon. And I'm sure that my example is very good and I want to develop this example not just with my support. So when I came to Kazakh Chess Federation, I also came to help to build, to put some right people, to keep some most efficient team inside the federation, but then to add some additional specialists who can help with some new knowledge and with some new approach. That is very important.
Then we will still be bringing some resources, because without resources sometimes it's very difficult to develop and build something sustainable if you have nothing. It's also impossible, but FIDE already has a lot of stuff and already has some sponsor support, some sovereign support from some championships. We will continue to do this, and FIDE is also very well connected. So we have a lot of different partners. In Kazakhstan, a lot of businesses became sponsors of the Kazakh Chess Federation because of our relationship, because we personally promoted that it will be mutually beneficial and we will appreciate much if you will support the Kazakh Chess Federation. We can do this globally.
So we do multiple partnerships with Freedom Holding and multiple agreements and memorandums with Citibank, with Nvidia, with companies from China, with many companies from Europe. So we have and we built and developed also a lot of relationships with large international companies. And I'm sure that as part of, we are part of the Russell 1000 index, traded on Nasdaq, have very good governance, and definitely will be able, I hope, to increase the amount of brands for cooperation. And I hope we will, with our professionalism, with our fundraising efforts, with our business network, we will attract more sponsors, help to attract new sponsors, not just for FIDE but also for national federations.
And of course, the development of the digital platform itself, in my opinion, will be a huge enabler for that. So that will help to unlock a lot of potential for sponsorship. Now, sponsorship should not be just about putting a logo on some championships. That should be fully integrated with the daily digital interactions of people with federations, tracking their players, stars, and help them to develop also media marketing, help to develop not just professional chess itself, but also the media industry around the sport, which is completely undeveloped in most parts of the world. And I think this development program in FIDE is also very important and we will try to support this.
Because each national federation, they should produce usually two things. We should produce champions, so the very highest professional results on one side, and on another side we should produce some PR. And PR will help to drive sponsorship, to fund the federation, to build a more sustainable future for social developments, for chess in schools developments. So all these platforms are expensive. And to achieve our goal, we need to be public, we need to be transparent, we need to know how to communicate. So communication is usually not the best skill of many professional chess players. But I think we still have a lot of professionals in this community and we will try to educate and help to build the skills for each national federation.
And going through your other points, one of them which kind of surprised me was that publish the world championship cycle and full international calendar of major events two years in advance, developed through open dialogue with players and national federations. Don't you think it's too ambitious two years in advance?
