The streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins became the largest streamer on the platform Twitch due to the boom around Fortnite in 2018. Now he has announced that he is switching to the competitor platform Mixer. How did the first stream go?
Here was the background: The switch of Ninja from Twitch to Mixer heated up the atmosphere and stirred up some dust in recent days.
Quickly, Ninja broke the subscriber record of the tiny platform compared to Twitch and brought along 500,000 subscribers. These are players who support him financially.
Mixer offered an incentive for users to subscribe to Ninja: Those who sign up on Mixer can spoil Ninja for free with the subscription. Certainly a lucrative deal for Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.
Those maintaining a subscription on Mixer receive 22 Ninja emoticons and do not have to see any advertisements.
Ninja’s switch to Mixer was heavily discussed, as Ninja is firmly associated with Fortnite and Twitch. The rise of Fortnite into the mainstream began when Ninja streamed together with the rapper “Drake” on Twitch in March 2018.
Other Twitch streamers and experts gave their opinions on the switch. People were curious about how much Ninja needs Twitch and how much Twitch needs Ninja.
A man from the audience calls out
This is how the first stream went: The first stream on Mixer took place during the “Lollapalooza Music Festival” in Chicago in front of a live audience. Ninja’s sponsor Red Bull had set up a tent there – Ninja also gulped down one energy drink after another.
The streamer played on an open stage, was in direct contact with the audience, and was playing Fortnite.
An audience member turned out to be somewhat quarrelsome and heckled Ninja with loud shouts from the crowd:
- He shouted: “Tfue is better!”, a well-known shout that Ninja has reacted to allergically.
- The streamer calmly countered it and was quite nasty towards Tfue: “How did he perform at the World Cup?”
- The heckler then shouted: “What did they pay you to switch to Mixer? 100 million?”
- He then yelled “Sellout, Sellout, Sellout” – the accusation that Ninja sold out. However, this earned no more reaction from Ninja.
- In the end, the demand was made again “One against one against Tfue.”
Overall, the stream went well for Ninja; he clearly had a lot of fun and described the atmosphere afterward as fantastic. Ninja also secured a few victories and played alongside a musician.
In the end, he appeared visibly satisfied.
More viewers watched Ninja on Mixer than recently on Twitch
How did the stream go with viewers? Overall, the stream on Mixer went quite well for Ninja. He reached a peak of about 80,000 viewers.
This is below the peak numbers he could set on Twitch in 2018 – but the viewer count is slightly above the level of his last streams on Twitch. There was a bit of a dip recently.
The last three streams on Twitch peaked at only between 40,000 and 63,000 viewers.
This is the special thing: Ninja is currently making the platform Mixer relevant at least for Fortnite fans on his own. Now we have to see how this develops in the long term and whether Twitch actually faces real competition.
Twitch reportedly only offered Ninja $15-20 million for 3 years
Why did Ninja switch? It can really only be about money – as seen from Microsoft’s “subscriber gift”.
The eSports expert Rod Breslau says, two sources have informed him that Ninja had negotiated with Twitch.
Twitch’s opening offer would have been between $15 and $20 million for 3 years. Ninja probably found that too low. This offer likely ultimately led to Ninja now being on Mixer for probably significantly more money.
How Ninja makes money from Fortnite, he explains here:
