Summary
Blevins first saw the light of day in Detroit on June 5, 1991. At the tender age of about nine years he discovered through Halo both his love for video games and a certain talent for this medium.
He gained his first fans as a professional player for well-known esports teams such as Cloud 9, Renegades, Team Liquid and Luminosity Gaming. Nowadays his name is known to everyone who is interested in esports or streaming. His international breakthrough came during the Fortnite Hype in 2018, during which time he set record after record and became one of the most successful streamers on Twitch. With blue hair and a yellow headband, he is now an icon of the industry.
After he and some other famous streamers had accepted a lucrative takeover bid from Twitch's competitor platform Mixer, things became a bit quieter around Blevins. Since September 2020 Ninja is back on the original platform Twitch.
Info Box (as of March 2021)
- Language: English
- Artist name: Ninja (formerly NinjasHyper)
- Real name: Richard Tyler Blevins
- Age / Born Date: June 29 / 5, 1991
- Official website: https://teamninja.com/
- YouTube subscribers: 24.2 million
- Twitch followers: 16.8 million
- Twitter followers: 6.6 million
- Instagram subscribers: 14.2 million
Platforms / Channels / Content
On his Twitch channel Ninja streams mainly current multiplayer games like Valorant, Fortnite, Fall Guys and Among Us. After streaming on Twitch since 2012, he switched to Mixer from August 2019 to July 2020. The reason for the change was that his work on Twitch was not appreciated by the platform, the streamer announced. He felt like a "slave" of the platform at Twitch. Even after the change, the streamer continued to criticize his former platform Twitch for misusing his offline channel as advertising space. According to Ninja, an erotic stream is said to have been number one in his channel recommendations for several weeks.
But the tide turned, as Mixer had to stop its service in July 2020 due to the lack of success. Despite the many negative incidents, Ninja announced that he will stream on Twitch again from September 2020. According to his own statement, he wants to give the platform a second chance. According to many rumors not without reason. The streamer is said to have received an exclusive contract worth millions from Twitch.
Ninja's streaming career started with H1Z1 and PUBG and was sparked like with fire accelerator when Fortnite Battle Royale became more and more popular. Today he mainly plays competitive multiplayer games like Valorant and Fortnite. Occasionally, popular games like Fall Guys and Among Us can be seen on his channel. He then publishes some of his highlights on YouTube.
Many of his viewers were thrilled by his exuberant, loud manner and his game skills. While he used to be known for getting involved in a heated exchange of words, Ninja nowadays is less provocative and hardly curses. This is partly due to his responsibility towards his sponsors and Twitch, but also to his personal development over the years. Appearances in TV shows and joint streams or game events with the rappers Drake and Travis Scott, the DJ Marshmellow or the footballer JuJu Smith-Schuster made him much better known outside the gaming universe. His trademarks to this day are his colorful hair and a fancy dance, the "PonPon Dance".
Ninja regularly organizes charity streams, the proceeds of which often amount to several hundred thousand Euros and are entirely used for charitable purposes.
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Life / Career
1991 - 2009
- Ninja was born on June 5, 1991 in Detroit.
- His two brothers and his father were all passionate gamers, but as the youngest of the family, they didn't let Ninja play at first. He therefore always played at times when the console was not in use. When he was ten years old, he regularly defeated his two older brothers John and Chris in video games. He says himself that with Halo 3 he became addicted to getting better and better.
- He attended high school from 2005-2009 and worked for a restaurant chain at the same time. At that time he was already earning about 1000 dollars a month with his streams.
- When he played his first tournaments, he had the full support of his family, who quickly recognized his potential.
2010 - 2011
- At a smaller Halo tournament 2010 in Wisconsin he met his current wife Jessica. Even though they were equally sympathetic, their relationship did not go beyond an acquaintance at first, as one of the two was always in a relationship.
- At that time Ninja was celebrating many successes in Halo Reach and was regularly in the Top 16.
- After high school, Blevins attended Silver Lake College, but dropped out after a year. His activities as a streamer already earned him enough money to run streaming as a full-time job. With an income of more than $3,000 a month, he was able to convince his family to take this step as well.
- In 2011 Blevins finally launched his YouTube channel NinjasHyper.
2012 - 2014
- In 2013, more than two years after the first encounter, Ninja met his current wife Jessica.
- Around this time he and his family had an appearance on the well-known American game show Family Feud.
- Tyler also tried his hand at other games such as Call of Duty during this time, but after rather negative feedback from his loyal community, he continued to stick to Halo in particular.
- In the meantime, his right eye was giving him a lot of trouble and threatened to end his career in e-sports prematurely. Without surgery he could have gone blind. His retina was about to detach itself. The subsequent month-long break destroyed the momentum he had built up in the very short-lived streaming business and gave him a hard time.
- Blevins still managed to fight his way back to the top of Halo 3 after this forced break and got his first big sponsor with Bud Light.
2015 - 2016
- Ninja now streamed more H1Z1 and PUBG and won first place at the H1Z1 Invitational and the PUBG Squads Gamescom Invitational. In addition, he and his team took second place at the H1Z1 Dreamhack.
2017 - 2018
- Ninja married his girlfriend Jessica.
- With the release of Fortnite and its growing popularity, the growth of Ninja’s channels increased rapidly. Blevins broke record after record, making Fortnite a mass phenomenon as well as himself a brand. Among other things he reached 180,000 subscribers on Twitch and 3.4 million followers.
- With stars like Drake, JuJu Smith Schuster and Travis Scott, well-known faces from outside the gaming universe also appeared in his streams. Together they reached astronomical 630,000 viewers at the same time.
- 2018 was an extremely successful year for Ninja. On Twitch alone, his viewing time was just under 292 million hours, or more than 33,000 years.
2019 - heute
- In November 2019, Ninja announced that he probably no longer wanted to play Fortnite professionally.
- From August 2019 - July 2020 Ninja was no longer on Amazon's platform Twitch, but on the new page Mixer from Microsoft. The reason for this was a highly endowed contract, which supposedly brought Ninja between 20 and 30 million dollars. Other streaming giants like Shroud also switched to this new platform. This change is still quite controversial today, because although it brought him a very lucrative contract, it severely limited his audience. Only about 2.5 million of his 15 million followers on Twitch followed him on Mixer. The switch could also have had a lasting effect on his YouTube account. Previously, almost every one of his videos reached the magic mark of one million clicks. After that he cracked them much less often. It didn't change the fact that Blevins has been streaming on Twitch again since September 2020.
- Ninja product placements and advertising partners took on unknown dimensions for a gamer. In addition to sponsoring Red Bull, Adidas, for example, recently released a series of sneakers in collaboration with Blevins.
Greatest successes
- Concurrent viewers on Twitch: Together with Drake, Travis Scott and JuJu Smith-Schuster, Ninja reached 635,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch. This is the record for the most concurrent viewers outside of tournaments. Only a short time later, he beat his own record with 667,000 concurrent viewers.
- Twitch subscriber record: In March 2018, in the middle of the hype around Fortnite, Ninja reached 263,615 subscribers on Twitch, which is more than 900,000 dollars in revenue for Ninja. Of the $5 that a subscription costs, the streamer receives $3.49.
- YouTube clicks: In April and May 2018, Ninja's videos on YouTube were clicked about 400 million times, which should have earned him about one to two million dollars.
- Most social interactions of an athlete: In this category, Ninja even left Cristiano Ronaldo behind in April 2018 - with 300 million followers less.
- Most watched on Twitch: In the record year 2018, his fans watched him a total of 234 million times, more than twice as many as the runner-up in this ranking Riot Games, the games company behind League of Legends.
- The first esports athlete to make it to the front page of the well-known sports magazine ESPN: This is not only one of his greatest successes, but also in a way a recognition of e-sports by the masses.
- First player with 5000 victories in Fortnite: Even as a competitive player Ninja is ahead of many others. He reached the 5000-victory mark in the popular multiplayer game Fortnite.
- 51 duo victories in a row in Fortnite: Whoever has ever tried himself on Fortnite understands the incredible achievement behind this success. Together with Reverse2k, Blevins managed to achieve 51 victories in Fortnite's duo mode.
Assets / Income
Ninja’s income is composed of many different factors and is subject to extreme fluctuations. Most factors depend heavily on the range of the streamer and the time viewers spend watching his videos. Ninja has the following sources of income among others:
- Twitch Subscriptions: Twitch pays the streamer $3.49 per subscriber. In his best month, he probably made about $920,000 with this alone. Currently he still earns $67,000 per month with his 19,000 subscribers. Since some of the subs are also more expensive Tier 2 and Tier 3 subs, the amounts are probably ten percent higher.
- Twitch Donations: The largest donation Ninja remembers is $40,000. Estimates of average monthly donations range from $20,000 to $200,000. This amount fluctuates enormously, of course.
- Advertising on Twitch: Advertising on Twitch is paid per 1000 hits (CPM). This means that Ninja, after taking AdBlock users and Twitch Prime users into account, neither of whom see any advertising, generated an estimated $600,000 in his best months. At the moment, it is most likely less than $200,000 per month.
- YouTube revenues: YouTube videos are also remunerated per 1000 views (CPM). In its best two months, April and May 2018, Ninja reached about one to two million dollars with a total of 400 million clicks.
- Sponsorships: Budweiser, Red Bull, Uber Eats and PSD Underwear are just some of the sponsors of Ninja. These are estimated to bring him about 3.5 million annually or $290,000 per month.
- Fortnite "Support a Creator": With this feature, the streamer earns with every purchase his fans make in Fortnite. According to his own statement, he had over three million supporters in the meantime, which conservatively calculated this month should have earned him the same amount in dollars. This number has probably fallen enormously in the meantime.
- E-sport profits: In the total calculation the profits from e-sports are probably rather negligible.
- Merchandise: Since no figures are available here, no serious estimate can be made.
- It is important to note that Ninja has to pay a whole team from his earnings and of course he also has to pay taxes. Nevertheless, the Streamer has brought it to truly astronomical sums and is now certainly a multiple millionaire. Many sources assume a total wealth of about 25 million dollars. His total gross income per year, at least in the record year 2018, was estimated at $18 million.
Social channels
Instagram: Instagram.com/ninja
Twitter: Twitter.com/ninja
Facebook: Facebook.com/ninjatb
