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BGonline.org Forums
A _New_ World Championship?! - Marc's Reply
Posted By: Stick In Response To: A _New_ World Championship?! (Stick)
Date: Sunday, 24 August 2025, at 12:28 a.m.
Also taken from Facebook.
My response to WBGF's announcement that they have ambition to host their own World Championship. I was blocked from their facebook page, while I was typing the response:
As you guys probably know, I am the CEO of the Backgammon World Championship. An hour ago, an international federation called the WBGF announced that they are going to create their own world championship, because there is a demand for a less expensive world championship.
I think this is disrespectful to us and the community, since the world championship is the longest running tournament and the longest lineage of world champions. And it's also disrespectful for the actual world champions. I also think it's very bad for the game for them to make this aggressive move against our World Championship, because they will not be a net gain for growing the game.
It’s not true that it is “too expensive”. It's a deliberate manipulation to try and portray the Backgammon World Championship as "elite" and "only for wealthy". It's a slur trying to legitimise the WBGF, a political federation that doesn't represent the entire world of backgammon, to gain control of a world championship. The poker world championship is $10k and nobody says that is only for the elite. The chess world championship is only for 12 players. Backgammon World Championship is inclusive to everybody, since it's exactly an Open event, where you can qualify for €250, like 28 players did this summer.
If you travel to Nice and stay in Beausoleil it is exactly same price level as any other international tournament. And we had 28 €250 buy-in satellites for the €1800 main event AND a €600 Advanced division with no entry restrictions.
The value we created for the players this year, was very high. A gala dinner with three courses in Monaco for a €50 dinner ticket, the most prestigious and beautiful playing venue, the best tournament boards, the best tournament director and staff, and the best backgammon broadcast we have ever seen. The Backgammon World Championship is a bucket list experience that all backgammon players should experience at least once in their life.
A lot of the players who are supporting WBGF are players who have never participated and experienced the Backgammon World Championship, or for whatever reason thinks it is better for the game if the world championship was a €400 event held at a cheap venue. That might fit their personal preferences, but it is NOT the best way to grow the game, and we are proving them wrong real time.
We, Backgammon World Championship, reached out to WBGF in 2022 in good faith, when we bought the IP and Tournament from Ron Rubin after Patti's passing, in order to collaborate and let WBGF sanction and be affiliated with the World Championship. Which in my opinion would be better for the world of backgammon, and would legitimise WBGF as an international federation. But it was rejected with a derogatory remark of the "galaxy monte carlo world championship"... The Backgammon World Championship is NOT a "backgammon galaxy world championship", it is THE world championship with a 55 year lineage of World Champions. I will share the documents here. One would think that WBGF, a federation that was made to sanction tournaments, would like to sanction the biggest and most important tournament in the world, but already back then, the board members had their own ambition to take a stab at the world championship. For the last couple of years, they have had their "teams world championship" and "wbgf individual world championship", which is already pretty close to being insulting. Now they have taken the full step.
The owners are also some of the shareholders of Backgammon Galaxy, and therefore we can utilize the Backgammon Galaxy engine for growth of the Backgammon World Championship, which has yielded tremendous results so far. But it is two different entities and we are carrying the torch of the tradition that came long before us, from before I was even born. And from where I am standing we are doing an excellent job with that.
There are other issues... Backgammon World Championship has been hugely successful since we have taken it over. This years final is already up to 166,000 views on youtube in two weeks, and had 2800 concurrent live viewers at peak. These are unprecedented reach. If another organisation start making events with the words "Backgammon" and "World Championship" they will pirate on our IP and keywords in the youtube, google and LLM algorithms.
The argument that an international federation should control the world championship: to that I would say, a private entity will yield much greater results than a federation entity, since a private entity bears the cost and reaps the reward of the results. And we are proving that real time. And we DID reach out to WBGF to allow them to sanction
Please, if you are on our side in this, and believe that the historical world championship is the only true world championship, let your voice be heard on social media to push back.
While writing this post, Manny Olszynko just told me that the facebook moderator of their wbgf facebook site, has also deleted his comment, which was critical of their decision and supportive of the Backgammon World Championship.
We will continue our relentless 24/7/365 quest of growing backgammon into the mainstream, no matter what WBGF decides to do, but I think they are damaging our game and community with this decision.
Best regards, Marc Olsen, ceo of Backgammon World Championship
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