About Us
Chess.com is one of the largest gaming sites in the world and the #1 platform for playing, learning, and enjoying chess.
We are a team of 600+ fully remote people in 60+ countries working hard to serve the global chess community. We are here to support 250M+ chess players worldwide with the best possible product, content, and tools to serve the community!
We are a tech company. A gaming company. A content company. And we do it all with passion and commitment to the game. Above all we prize our mission-driven, flat, life-celebrating, no-corporate culture, and we look forward to meeting you and learning more about what you can bring to the team.
About You
We are hiring a VP, Events & Commercial to lead a talented team that oversees Chess.com's competitive events ecosystem and commercial strategy. This is a dual-mandate role: you own both the product (our online competitive events, broadcasts, and live finals) and the revenue engine (sponsorships, brand integrations, business development and internal alignment with ads and monetization teams). The best candidates will see these as one job, not two.
Chess.com runs the most complex and sophisticated competitive chess operation in the world. That means hundreds of online events — from the Speed Chess Championship to Titled Tuesday to our coverage of major events like the World Chess Championship. It means a broadcast operation that produces multiple shows per week. And it means a growing portfolio of selective, high-impact live events. Our competitive programming is a key commercial asset, and our commercial strategy is what makes our events bigger.
Chess.com has some of the most loved and heavily used features in online gaming, and many of them have untapped potential for commercial partnerships (via both direct sales and experiential, white-glove activations). This person will identify and develop these assets across Chess.com's product portfolio, finding models where brand integrations actually improve the user experience rather than degrade it. That kind of thinking — creative, product-aware, commercially rigorous — is what separates this role from a traditional events or BD job.
You'll directly support the Events Commissioner and Head of Business Development, working alongside senior leaders in Growth, Product, Monetization, Content, and Communications. This role reports to our Chief Chess Officer and is the strategic leader at the intersection of how we invest in competitive chess, create compelling opportunities for commercial partners, and deploy partnerships to grow revenue.
Who You Are
- You understand that competitive programming is a product. You think about event formats, audience growth, community engagement, and commercial potential as interconnected variables — not separate departments. You've built or scaled a competitive ecosystem, not just run individual events.
- You are commercially creative. You don't just sell what's on the shelf — you see opportunities to build new commercial products that create value for partners, users, and Chess.com simultaneously. You get excited about finding the deal structure nobody has tried before.
- You know how to work alongside a deeply involved founder/CCO who cares passionately about competitive chess and will always have opinions. That doesn't threaten you — it energizes you. You bring the structure, the operational discipline, and the commercial acumen that make his vision executable.
- You are hungry. Chess is experiencing a cultural moment, and Chess.com's event properties are at the center of it. You see the opportunity to build the defining competitive platform for an entire sport — and you want to be the person who does it.
- You love chess — or are ready to fall in love with it.
What you'll do
Competitive Events & Broadcast
- Own Chess.com's competitive event ecosystem — from marquee online properties like the Speed Chess Championship to Titled Tuesday to our broadcast coverage of major events like the World Chess Championship. You help set the annual calendar, the quality bar, and the strategic direction for the full portfolio.
- Run our broadcast operation with the precision and production quality of a top-tier sports network. Chess.com produces original shows and covers the biggest moments in competitive chess. When we're live, the standard is uncompromising. You work with a high performing team to own that standard.
- Oversee the competitive programming strategy: which events do we own and produce? Which do we cover and broadcast? Where do we invest in new formats? How do we grow the audience for competitive chess online? These are strategic questions, not just operational ones — and they're yours.
- Build the connective tissue between events and content. Our competitive programming generates the most exciting chess content — broadcast clips, social moments, editorial storylines. You work closely with the VP, Media & Content to ensure every event is designed with content output in mind, not just the live audience.
- Manage a selective portfolio of in-person events. These are high-impact, not high-volume — a handful of tentpole moments per year that extend our brand into the physical world. You know how to make a small number of live events punch well above their weight.
- Manage the broadcast production infrastructure — directors, producers, technical operations — and make deliberate decisions about when to build internal capability vs. when to contract out.
Commercial Strategy & Business Development
- Own the commercial strategy for our events, and drive brand partnerships across Chess.com's broader product portfolio. This means both selling against existing inventory (event sponsorships, broadcast integrations, brand activations, as well as partnering closely with the Monetization team to creating entirely new commercial assets that didn't exist before.
- Identify and develop new commercial opportunities — product integrations, feature sponsorships, format innovations — that create revenue while improving the user experience. Some of Chess.com's most beloved features have untapped commercial potential. You see that potential and know how to unlock it without compromising what makes them great.
- Lead business development and sponsorship sales against our event properties and broadcast inventory. You understand how to package online events, broadcast reach, content IP, and community access into compelling commercial propositions. You're not just selling impressions, you're selling access to the most engaged audience in chess.
- Help drive digital ad sales by leveraging senior-level relationships with brands and agencies, unlocking ad inventory, and building custom sponsorship packages. You will help accelerate digital revenue, while integrating this effort into the broader sponsorship portfolio.
- Think strategically about how Chess.com's investment in competitive programming creates commercial value. The best event investments generate returns through sponsorships, media rights, content, and brand equity. You see the full picture and can make the case for both defensive investment and revenue-generating opportunity.
- Work closely with Communications to ensure commercial deals are announced and activated in ways that feel authentic to our community. The best deals amplify our brand. The worst ones erode it. You know the difference before the ink dries.
- Set revenue targets, build pipeline discipline, and create the reporting and forecasting infrastructure that lets leadership understand the commercial health of the business at any given moment.
P&L and Team Leadership
- Own the Events & Commercial P&L: manage budgets, headcount, and resource allocation with the rigor expected of a senior executive running a scaled operation with real revenue accountability. This includes the strategic allocation of significant event spend, you can justify where the money goes and demonstrate what it produces.
- Directly manage team leads across Events, Broadcast, and Business Development, including a Head of Business Development and an Events Commissioner who are strong operators in their own right. This is a leader-of-leaders role. You set the strategy and build the conditions for your team to execute autonomously.
- Build scalable processes, reporting structures, and team rhythms that allow this organization to operate at a high level whether the CCO is in the room or not.
Preferred Skills
- 10+ years of experience in events, sports media, esports, competitive gaming, or digital entertainment with progressive leadership responsibility, including P&L ownership and revenue accountability.
- Demonstrated experience as a leader of leaders. You have managed Directors, VPs, and senior individual contributors, and you've built teams that outperform when you're not in the room.
- Proven track record in online competitive programming, esports, or digital-first event production at scale. You understand that the future of sports consumption is online and you've operated in that world.
- Experience running or overseeing broadcast operations: producing shows, managing production teams, maintaining quality standards across a high-volume schedule.
- Experience building and closing commercial deals that combine events, content, and brand integration. You understand how to create sponsorship packages that deliver value to partners without compromising the product.
- Deep expertise in digital advertising and direct sales to large brands. You understand how to drive conversion for partners while remaining authentic to our brand.
- A track record of commercial innovation, you've created new revenue streams, not just optimized existing ones. You've looked at a product or platform and seen commercial potential that others missed.
- Strategic fluency in the economics of events: you can model the ROI of competitive programming investments, articulate the defensive value of owning key properties, and build a business case that connects spend to revenue.
- Deep relationships across the sports, entertainment, and brand marketing ecosystem. You know brand CMOs, media buyers, and sports property executives — and they take your call.
Nice-To-Have Skills
- Background in chess, esports, or passion-driven competitive communities — understanding how these audiences differ from mainstream sports fans and why that matters for event design and commercial strategy.
- Experience working with sports governing bodies — navigating the politics and logistics of covering events you don't own.
- Familiarity with live event production and the logistical complexity of producing tentpole in-person events across multiple countries.
- Experience operating inside a founder-led, fast-moving organization where Slack is the lifeblood and the pace is relentless.
About the Opportunity
- This is a full-time opportunity
- We are 100% remote (work from anywhere!)
- This role is open to candidates who can work in USA/CAN/EMEA
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