While there is still no exclusivity deal in sight just yet, Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins has found a new temporary home for his livestreaming career on YouTube Gaming – and he drew in quite the crowd for his first stream on the platform.
With close to 100,000 already watching when Ninja’s stream countdown ticked over to zero, his viewer count kept climbing throughout the stream and – according to the man himself – peaked at 164,000 viewers. While the Fortnite stream, which featured Ninja’s usual Fortnite crew of Ben ‘DrLupo’ Lupo, Tim ‘TimTheTatman’ Betar, and fellow YouTube Gaming streamer Jack ‘CouRage’ Dunlop, only lasted for around an hour and a half, it managed to hold most of that audience right until the end, with Ninja’s estimated average viewership hovering around 100,000.
These numbers are far more impressive than those he achieved on his Mixer debut in August 2019. According to stats from Twitch Tracker, Ninja’s first stream on his previous platform attracted an average viewership of just over 61,000 and a peak of around 85,000.
However, his YouTube numbers still can’t hold a candle to some of his biggest Twitch streams from back in the day. During 2018 especially, Ninja achieved peak viewership of well over 200,000 people on dozens of Fortnite livestreams, with his most watched being his famous stream alongside Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster which topped out at a mind-blowing 616,000 viewers.
While Ninja’s return to streaming following the demise of Mixer was hotly anticipated, he is still in negotiations with streaming platforms regarding exclusivity deals. His short and sweet debut on YouTube had the feel of an audition – a bargaining chip he could use in contract negotiations to show YouTube Gaming the kind of audiences he’ll be able to attract thanks to his existing 23.9 million channel subscribers.
He also admits in the final moments of the stream that he “didn’t know what to expect” viewership wise but was extremely happy with the results.
The exact frequency at which Ninja will now stream isn’t crystal clear, but he did sign off by promising more streams would be coming “sooner rather than later.”