Ninja Signs Exclusive Twitch Contract After Being Released from Mixer Deal
Tyler "Ninja" Blevins announced Thursday he's returning to Twitch on an exclusive streaming contract after Mixer, the platform he left that company for in August 2019, shut down operations in July.
Natalie Jarvey of the Hollywood Reporter reported it's a multiyear deal and provided a statement from the record-setting streamer:
"I am excited to get back to streaming full-time and connecting with my loyal fanbase. I really took my time to decide which platform was best and Twitch has been supportive throughout this process and understanding my overall career goals. In this next chapter, I'm going to make it a point to elevate and bring more eyes to underrepresented creators. I am looking forward to working with Twitch to demonstrate how this amazing community of gamers can make a meaningful impact."
Ninja and Twitch were at odds following his departure. The platform initially altered his account page, which boasts over 15 million followers, to feature some of its other streamers—one of them began showing pornographic content that was in turn highlighted on the inactive account.
The 29-year-old Detroit native could never match his Twitch viewership numbers while trying to help build Mixer, which also brought in Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek as part of an aggressive strategy to attract viewers away from the industry leader.
Esports insider Rod "Slasher" Breslau reported both highly popular streamers declined offers from Facebook Gaming, which led the buyouts from Mixer, including an estimated $30 million for Ninja after just 10 months on the site. That number doesn't factor in what he made from donations and subscriptions.
Shroud has also returned to Twitch after leaving Mixer.
Ninja spent the past two months as a free agent. He hosted streams on both YouTube and Twitch, leading to speculation they were the top contenders to sign him.
His rapid rise into mainstream stardom coincided with the smash-hit success of Fortnite, which was released in the fall of 2017 and dominated viewership on Twitch by the summer of 2018.
No single stream had a bigger impact on that success than when Ninja teamed with music superstars Drake and Travis Scott and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster in March 2018. It attracted over 635,000 concurrent viewers, obliterating the record for a non-tournament broadcast.
The former Halo pro parlayed his rapidly growing audience into hosting his own event in Las Vegas in April 2018 and holding a stream from Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve that year.
He was then named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
Now Ninja is heading back to Twitch, and Michael Aragon, the company's senior vice president of content, welcomed him with open arms, per Jarvey:
"We are thrilled Ninja is returning to Twitch. Tyler is an iconic force in the gaming community, and it's been amazing to see the impact he's made on the industry and broader culture. Gaming—and the people who love it—are being recognized by a broad mainstream audience now in part because of Tyler, and we know he's just getting started."
His return stream is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday afternoon.
