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.
"The chessboxing event happened on Sunday, it was f***ing crazy," he told fans during a recent stream. "We had 317,000 peak viewers, the VOD [Video On Demand] of the stream has 3.5m viewers. The event itself cost $1.6m, so by every single metric I think we could find it was the biggest event I have ever done."
Asked by a fan if he had made a profit on the show, which was a success by almost every standard, he replied: "No, it lost a bit of money. I think it lost like $200,00, maybe $150,000, which isn't that bad. 'It's not that bad, it's not that bad, copium, copium, copium'. But it isn't that bad because I can make up a good chunk of that."
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He proceeded to joke he would make that loss back by making reaction videos to a dating video series called 'The Button', which he is known for on his channel. It appeared from the YouTuber's tone that he didn't seem concerned about the financial loss, as he recapped the event in good spirits, ultimately deeming it to have worked out well.
YouTube boxing has become massively popular over the last four years with the likes of KSI and the Paul brothers Jake and Logan making millions from the endeavour. But Ludwig's event attempted to add something different, with less mainstream influencers involved in the new take on boxing and chess.
