GothamChess Net Worth: How Much Money He Makes On YouTube & Twitch
GothamChess Net Worth – $12 Million
GothamChess is a popular chess YouTube channel created by an American chess international master named Levy Rozman. He has generated an estimated net worth of $12 million from the platform. He is basically an internet chess teacher. His videos include an instructional opening overview where he discusses how to play openings and in-depth explanations of different strategies that can be used. He has extensively reviewed games played on The Queens Gambit miniseries and others.
Rozman was born in Brooklyn New York as a child of Russian immigrants. He began playing chess at the age of 6 as an extracurricular activity and entered his first tournament at the age of 7. He has attained the titles of National Master in 2011, FIDE Master in 2016 and International Master in 2018. He attended Baruch College where he did a Bachelor’s degree in statistics and quantitative modeling in 2017. He then focused on chess as a full-time career working as a client service associate for UBS Wealth Management.
How Much Money Does GothamChess Earn On YouTube?
The channel has over 6 million subscribers as of 2024 and has accumulated over 3.6 billion views so far. It is able to get an average of 3 million views per day (approx 50% from Shorts) from different sources. This should generate and estimated revenue of $12,000 per day ($4.4 million a year) from the ads that appear on the videos.
YouTube content creators based in the US, UK, Canada and Australia generally get paid $2 – $12 per 1000 monetized views after YouTube takes its cut. Monetized views usually range from 40% – 80% of the total views. All these are influenced by several factors like the device played on, time of the year, the location of the viewer, ad inventory, how many ads there are on a video, how many people skip the ads, type of advertisement, ad engagement, type of content, etc.
The cost of an ad view is based on an auction between advertisers based on views. Advertisers have to bid a minimum of $0.01 per view. There is also a program known as Google Preferred where deep-pocketed companies can target ads on the top 5% most popular content. The ad rates here are higher than normal.
Apart from ads, YouTube content creators also generate extra income from other methods such as YouTube Premium, Superchats & Superstickers, Super Thanks, Channel Membership and Shopping.
YouTube Premium viewers pay a monthly fee to view premium content on YouTube and watch videos without ads. Here, content creators get paid based on watch time on their videos. The longer the viewers watch their videos, the more money they earn.
Super Chat and Super Sticker are used by fans to connect with creators during live streams and premiers. When one buys a Super Chat, their comment is highlighted within the live chat while the Super Stickers get an animated image that surfaces in live chat. Super Thanks lets creators earn revenue from viewers who want to show extra gratitude for their videos. Fans can buy a one-time animation and get to post a distinct, colorful, and customizable comment in the video’s comment section.
Shopping allows eligible creators to connect their stores to YouTube to feature their own products.
YouTube Shorts generate revenue in a different way as compared to traditional videos. The revenue from ads appearing between Shorts will be pooled together then a portion of the total revenue will be allocated to a Creator Pool. Eligible creators will be paid based on their share of total views.
How Much Money GothamChess Makes On Twitch
The streamer has over 1 million followers and has accumulated over 47 million views. He gets an average of 3000 viewers per stream, his highest hitting over 10,000 viewers. Generally, streamers make money through ads, subscribers, donations and bits. GothamChess has an estimated 1,000 subscribers from who he makes a minimum of $2.5 for each month they are subscribed. This adds up to $2,500 per month ($30,000 a year).
Officially, Twitch Partners and Affiliates receive 50% of the total subscription fee, so for the $4.99 tier, the streamer would get around $2.50. Twitch has been known to increase this amount for popular streamers to encourage them to remain on the Twitch platform, with some being upgraded to anywhere from 60% to 100% of the monthly fee.
Streamers make money through the Cheering feature whenever a fan cheers with bits in the chat. A Cheer is an animated chat emote that uses bits. Typing “Cheer1” will generate a grey bouncing triangle, and cost you 1.4 cents. “Cheer100” brings up a dancing purple diamond, and costs you $1.4. You can Cheer any amount you please (including irregular figures, and the corresponding emotes get larger and larger, up to a “Cheer10000,” a $140 tip represented by a fractured red star. streamers will get 1 cent for every Bit pledged while Twitch will keep the 0.4 cents.
Fans can also donate directly to their favorite streamers through Paypal and also cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, litecoin or ethereum. There are a variety of third-party services which Twitch streamers can connect to their account to activate additional features such as donations and alerts. Some of the more-popular services are Gaming For Good, StreamTip, Muxy, Stream Elements, and StreamLabs. All of these services create a unique donation page for your channel hosted on their own server which you can direct your viewers to make a donation.
General Expenses
Content creators incur a wide variety of expenses to create their content. These can include things like production costs, employee salaries, travel expenses, rent, buying new equipment, utilities, amenities, entertainment, subscription fees and other living expenses. One of the biggest expenses for most creators is taxes. Your tax brackets generally depend on your income. In a country like the United States, the highest tax rate is 37%. A combination of all these expenses determines one’s ability to save and invest, consequently how much one’s net worth grows.
Other Sources Of Revenue
Rozman works closely with Chess.com and has been part of their streaming partnership since 2017. He has been a regular commentator for the platform analyzing tournaments like PogChamps and the 2020 Candidates Tournament. He has had a number of sponsorship for his videos from different companies. He has promoted brands like Honey, Blinkist, Surf Shark, Babbel, Audible, Incogni, Epic Games and many others.
In addition, Rozman sells courses on his website Chessly. It contains learning tools that help make learning fun and engaging.