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Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Twitch’s most-watched streamer from 2018, announced on Thursday that he would be exclusively streaming on Mixer beginning this weekend, and his addition is already paying dividends for the platform.
While with Twitch, Blevins had more than 14M followers, and during his prime in the spring of 2018, his subscription total on gaming’s biggest platform reached upwards of 285K paid subscribers.
In contrast, there wasn’t a single broadcaster on Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer that had more than 1M followers before Blevins’ arrival, according to data gathered by Social Blade.
Not only has Mixer provided little competition to Twitch, but the platform only accounted for 3% of the total hours watched across live streaming platforms including Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook gaming during Q2.
A Stream Elements report on gaming livestream platforms in Q2 showed that Twitch has more than 2.72B hours watched, and Mixer had only 112M. For comparison, Blevins alone had 22.7M hours watched from April-June this year, and last year he racked up a whopping 227.5M hours watched for the entirety of 2018.
Not only is the addition of Blevins to Mixer the biggest thing that the young platform has ever experienced, but it represents a massive amount of exposure for a gaming platform that many gamers may not even know about.
Following yesterday’s announcement, Mixer’s Twitter account began to gain followers as a rapid rate. Social Blade data shows that halfway through Friday, the account has gained more than 30K followers, up nearly 10% from 280K followers on August 1.
While Blevins’ viewership statistics have seen a dip in 2019, his subscriber count for was above 20K for all but May and June this year. Now that he has moved to Mixer, a promotion on the platform has helped him already eclipse 100K subscribers with the new platform.
We have hit over 500k subscribers on mixer. What better way to celebrate than with some cake?!
? @RYANHADJI pic.twitter.com/q0O0Ys54St
— Ninja (@Ninja) August 2, 2019
As a part of his move to Mixer, people are currently able to subscribe to his Mixer channel for free for the first two months he streams from the platform. On Twitter yesterday, Blevins wrote shortly after the promotion was announced that he had already eclipsed 100K subs on Mixer.
Prior to Blevins’ first day of streaming, the total number of viewers watching Fortnite on Mixer hovered around, or a little less than, 10K at any given time. During his first live stream from Lollapalooza in Chicago, Blevins was able to consistently keep around 60-70K viewers in the middle of the afternoon.
It’s yet to be seen how Blevins’ move will affect other top streamers and influencers, but if the effect that he’s already had on Mixer’s social media channels and website traffic is any suggestion of what is to come, the growth of Mixer could extend further.
Blevins might be the most powerful influencer in gaming, but he is just one influencer. If Mixer is going to make a lasting push to compete with Twitch as the top livestreaming platforming for gamers, it will come from other influential broadcasters following the lead of Blevins.
