The two streamers Tyler “Ninja” Blevins (Fortnite) and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek (Apex Legends, PUBG) were until a few months ago the two biggest streamers on Twitch. What are their viewer numbers now, in November 2019, after their switch to Mixer?
Ninja was this strong before the switch: The streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins owes his rapid rise mainly to Fortnite. In 2018, Ninja and Fortnite were inseparable.
For a long time, Ninja was the streamer with the most followers on Twitch (via sullygnome):
- Ninja had an average of 77,719 viewers in 2018 when he streamed – he earned a lot of money that year
- The absolute peak was reached in April 2018, as Ninja had an average of 125,318 viewers with his streams
- Just before his switch, Ninja had an average of 41,448 viewers – that was in July 2019
Ninja shrinks to a quarter on Mixer
This is how many viewers Ninja now has on Mixer: Ninja switched from Twitch to Mixer on August 1st.
In the last 30 days there, that is in November 2019, Ninja reached an average of 9,417 viewers.
That is less than a quarter of his relatively weak last month on Twitch.
This is how strong shroud was before the switch: The streamer Michael “shroud” Grzesiek had his heyday on Twitch with the surprising release of the shooter Apex Legends in February 2019.
His “normal games” included titles like PUBG or Battlefield. In the last months on Twitch, shroud played a lot of “World of Warcraft”. Now on Mixer, he turned to “Escape from Tarkov”.
After Ninja’s switch, shroud was for a short time the number 1 on Twitch (via sullygnome), before he then switched himself:
- shroud had an average of 33,473 viewers in 2018
- In his strongest month on Twitch, in February 2019, shroud entertained an average of 68,569 viewers
- In the last month before his switch, in September 2019, shroud had an average of 23,624 viewers
This is how many viewers shroud now has on Mixer: The switch from shroud is not that long ago. On October 24, 2019, he switched platforms.
In the last 30 days, in November 2019, shroud reaches 7,523 viewers on Mixer. He too has shrunk to about a third of his viewer base within a few weeks.
This is the background: It is clear that both shroud and Ninja have received special deals from Mixer to make their switches financially worthwhile for them.
They are apparently no longer as dependent on viewers, donations, and subscriptions as they were on Twitch. Now, Ninja occasionally takes breaks – that was unthinkable on Twitch.
However, it is clear that the circumstances have now changed and the general level of viewer counts on Mixer is far below that of Twitch. At the moment, both streamers still benefit from their time on Twitch and bring part of their core audience with them.
The interesting question will be how they can catch “naturally migrating viewers”.
In any case, the switch of the two top streamers has triggered quite a bit: there are now almost weekly reports of a major Twitch streamer leaving the platform and switching to a competitor. However, it is not only Mixer that is relevant, streamers are also switching to Facebook – YouTube is also actively poaching Twitch streamers.
Whether the power dynamics between the streaming platforms will shift remains to be seen.
