oth Ninja and Shroud made the shocking move to Mixer. Although they saw their bank accounts’ rise, they also watched their viewership plummet. If you have never heard of Ninja and Shroud, you have probably never heard of Fortnite or CS:GO either, and that’s okay. Here’s some background on the two gaming sensations.
Who is Tyler “Ninja” Blevins?
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is the most well-known video game player in the world. Initially known for his play in competitive Halo, Tyler’s rise to fame took off when the Battle Royale (BR) genre was introduced. First trying out H1Z1, then PUBG, finally Fortnite… Ninja’s Twitch channel soared with Fornite’s increasing popularity through late 2017. Everything changed in March 2018 when Ninja joined up with Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster in the game. His follows went through the roof, passing 2 million, more than quadruple what he had less than a year prior.
Tyler was in the daily news cycle as he continued breaking record after record:
- June 2018: Signs with Red Bull
- April 2018: Held his own Fortnite Tournament called Ninja Vegas 2018 which broke Twitch’s previous viewership record of 667,000 live viewers.
- September 2018: First eSport Athlete to be featured on the cover of ESPN Magazine
- 2018-2019: Won practically every Content/Streamer award related to Gaming
- August 2019: Signs with Adidas
- August 2019: Becomes the first popular streamer to sign with Mixer-Microsoft’s steaming platform, and Twitch competitor.
Who is Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek
Professional CS:GO player turned full-time streamer, Shroud is known for his incredible aiming abilities. From 2014 to 2017 Shroud played on Cloud9’s CS:GO team, with an estimated winning of just $200,000. In August 2017, he stepped away from the competitive scene for Cloud9 and focused solely on streaming. In 2018 he parted ways with Cloud9 and officially retired from CS:GO.
Since then, Shroud had dominated almost every tracked statistic on Twitch. Between his 7 million followers and 54,000 subscribers (streamers generally make 3$/subscription/month so you do the math) on Twitch, over 1 million followers on both Instagram and Twitter, plus another 6 million on Youtube, Shroud was neck and neck with Ninja for notoriety among gamers. So much so, that shortly after Ninja made the shocking move to Mixer, Shroud followed.
What was Ninja and Shroud’s Deal with Mixer?
Although the deals have never been publicly released, the newest estimates have each deal ranging from $20-30 Million USD.
Was the Deal Worth it?
With a rough estimation of their deals with Mixer, there has been a lot of speculation if these deals were actually worth it to the streamers. With the COVID-19 Pandemic, Twitch streamers and content creators have seen massive spikes in viewership. While Ninja and Shroud haven’t seen an equal increase in viewership on Mixer.
In a recent episode of the Nadeshot and CouRageJD Podcast, joined by DrLupo, they discussed how Mixer’s audience still doesn’t compare to the size of Twitch’s. DrLupo speculated that Shroud could be averaging over 350,000 viewers streaming Valorant on Twitch (if he stayed), while only obtaining 14,000 viewers on Mixer. This would be concerning for the streamers if they were not already paid by the platform directly.
The bright side is Ninja and Shroud not having to worry about chasing views for subscribers like they once did. With the speculated contracts they both hold, neither have to worry about subscribers for the rest of their life. However, it must not be easy to see all of your fellow streamers on a different platform racking in those views that you were once used to holding.
There’s no doubt Twitch offered them both enormous contracts to stay with the platform. Now we can only speculate if the Twitch contract, plus their enormous subscriber base, is still less than the deal Mixer offered and if this was all worth it… We also do not know how long each contract will last. Maybe in five years, they will extend their deals with Mixer, or they might just move back to their old friend Twitch.
