Ninja Might've Made Millions By Ditching Twitch

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins is making a stupid amount of money. He has been for years, mostly thanks to his tenure on Twitch. That's why we were all so shocked when he ditched his streaming platform of choice for Microsoft's up and coming Mixer. Don't get us wrong – Mixer certainly has its appeal – but Twitch is the biggest streaming platform in the world. Why would Ninja abandon it?

It had to be the money. But how much did it take to entice Ninja? CNN Business has put an educated estimate at a whopping $20 to $30 million.

That's an impressive amount. This number was given to CNN by Justin Warden, CEO of Ader, the marketing and talent management agency that works with Ninja. We already knew that he was raking in around $10 million in 2018 thanks to Twitch donations, merch, and brand deals with the likes of Red Bull. Now Ninja has partnered with even bigger names like Adidas and the game that started it all: Fortnite. Players can now embody the streamer himself via an official Ninja skin. This Tyler Blevins guy is going places.

There's good news for smaller streamers, too, however. This same report states that streamers with around 10,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch could expect similar deals offering up to $10 million. Smaller streamers could make a tidy profit of $1 million. This comes from Ryan Morrison, CEO of the talent agency Evolved. Good news for anyone trying to be the next Ninja — you don't have to have the most subscribers on Twitch to get Mixer's attention and money. 

We were skeptical when Ninja made the switch to Mixer. Mixer is a smaller platform that doesn't have near as many viewers. Despite this, Ninja has been doing quite well for himself. But smaller streamers might feel some friction in moving to Mixer. Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek saw a significant amount of his audience abandon him following his big Microsoft move. There's probably a couple million dollars from his own Mixer deal keeping him satisfied, however.