Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins shocked everyone when he made the choice to switch from Twitch to Mixer, and now we might have an idea of how much Amazon’s streaming platform offered to convince him to stay.
Ninja kicked off a major streaming platform war when he moved to Mixer. Following his high-profile switch that came in the form of a press conference with himself, we saw major streamers like shroud, CouRageJD, and several others make similar decisions.
According to a new report from Kotaku, Twitch offered him $15 million over three years, but they were outpaced by both Facebook Gaming and Mixer.
“Twitch’s offer to keep Blevins, sources said, topped out at around $15 million per year for three years,” says the Kotaku report. “Mixer and Facebook offered him more, with Mixer upping the ante to something in the neighborhood of $20 million per year.”
The report claims that Twitch believed Ninja had maxed out his “earned media” for the platform, meaning they had already gotten as much free publicity as they could get out of him. This ended up being a major factor in how much the company was willing to offer him.
While Twitch had already become a household name, Mixer wasn’t exactly there yet and could benefit a lot by signing the Fortnite superstar.
It lags far behind in hours watched when compared to Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and even Facebook Gaming, but it is looked at as a major player in the streaming landscape.
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Signing two star streamers hasn’t had much of an impact in terms of bringing extra eyes to other Mixer streamers, but it’s gone a long way in giving some credibility to the Microsoft-owned platform.
Another way it can benefit from Ninja is by taking advantage of his roots in the Halo series. Before he skyrocketed to fame with Fortnite in 2017, he was a professional Halo player.
Microsoft will be launching a new console and Halo: Infinite later in the year, so the signing came at a great time. The company will likely use him to promote Halo, as they already did with Gears 5 when that launched.
The same Kotaku report claims a portion of money from the reported deal came from Microsoft’s Xbox division, which was “a much more sizable amount than any Mixer had negotiated with a streamer before.”
It’s clear Microsoft will be interested in stirring up some extra interest for their first-party titles with Ninja, and while it’s too early to know if that’s actually going to make a major difference, they are definitely it in for the long haul.
