How Samay Raina's Challenge Inspired Anand Mahindra to Launch Global Chess League

A challenge from comedian Samay Raina during an online interaction in 2020 eventually inspired industrialist Anand Mahindra to help create the Global Chess League, a project Mahindra now jokingly describes as the “most expensive joke” ever played on him.

Mahindra recently revealed the unusual story behind the league, explaining how a casual provocation from Raina developed into an international franchise-based chess competition featuring some of the biggest names in the sport.

The idea emerged during the 2020 Chess Olympiad when Mahindra was watching Samay Raina and chess commentator Sagar Shah's online coverage of the event. He noticed that the number of viewers watching their stream continued to grow rapidly, highlighting the increasing popularity of chess among a new generation of audiences.

During the interaction, Raina challenged Mahindra to start a global chess league. What began as a joke soon turned into a serious conversation.

Mahindra took the suggestion seriously, setting off discussions that eventually brought FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich and five-time world chess champion Viswanathan Anand into the project.

According to Mahindra, Dvorkovich later contacted him to ask whether he was genuinely serious about the idea of creating a global chess league. Mahindra confirmed that he was, and conversations over the following months helped turn the proposal into a major sporting project.

The involvement of Viswanathan Anand gave the initiative further momentum, with one of the most successful players in chess history becoming part of the effort to build the competition.

The Global Chess League was eventually launched as a franchise-based team competition designed to bring a new format to the sport. Unlike traditional chess tournaments, which largely focus on individual competition, the league places leading players into teams that compete for their respective franchises.

The competition features six franchises and has attracted several prominent names from international chess. Since its launch, the Global Chess League has been held across multiple cities, including Dubai, London, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Four seasons into its journey, the project has grown far beyond the challenge Samay Raina originally made in 2020. The league now carries an annual prize purse of $1 million, while its projected five-year business value is expected to exceed $40 million.

Reflecting on how the idea began, Mahindra jokingly described the entire project as the “most expensive joke” anyone had played on him.

Despite the investment and effort involved, Mahindra said he has no regrets about taking Raina's challenge seriously and expressed satisfaction at seeing the league grow into a successful international competition.

Mahindra also spoke about his personal relationship with chess, admitting that he is not a particularly strong player and continues to struggle against chess bots on Chess.com.

However, he believes the imperfections of human players are precisely what make chess compelling for audiences.

With artificial intelligence now capable of identifying the strongest possible moves, Mahindra argued that spectators are still drawn to the pressure, mistakes, emotions and unpredictability of human competition.

For him, people do not gather to watch machines make perfect moves. They watch chess because human players can make audiences emotionally invested in every decision.

What began as Samay Raina's challenge during an online interaction has now grown into a global sporting competition, proving that a joke can sometimes lead to a much bigger idea. For Anand Mahindra, that challenge became the foundation of the Global Chess League.