Social media star Ludwig Anders Ahgren, who goes by his first name Ludwig, has admitted he lost $200,000 promoting a celebrity chessboxing event.
The renowned YouTuber and streamer, who has around eight million followers across social media, put on the event, in which fighters competed in a round of timed chess before putting on gloves and boxing. And despite drawing a capacity crowd of over 10,000 to the Galen Center in Los Angeles and attracting 3.6m viewers to the stream of the show, he took a big hit on the event.
Ludwig made the decision to allow fans to watch the December 11 event for free on YouTube, as opposed to putting it on pay-per-view like most YouTube boxing events, or placing it behind a broadcast paywall such as DAZN. And even with millions tuning in and a capacity crowd buying tickets, the $1.6million cost of putting on the event returned around $1.4m.
