Popular Fortnite streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins will operate a tournament series in partnership with gaming agency Loaded to be broadcast on his personal channel on Microsoft’s streaming platform Mixer. “Ninja Battles Featuring Fortnite,” which kicks off today, will be a six-week Fortnite tournament series with a $400K USD prize pool. Sixty players will compete in the series including 2019 Fortnite World Cup champion Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf.
With the rise of Fortnite, Blevins became the most popular streamer on Twitch, generating 221.91M hours watched on the Amazon-owned platform in 2018. In 2019, with Loaded as his representation, Blevins secured a lucrative, exclusive streaming deal with Mixer, worth between $20M-$30M, according to CNN Business. Although this deal is with Mixer, the tournament series is independently produced by Blevins and Loaded.
While the tournament’s main stream will be broadcast on Blevin’s Mixer channel, each competitor will be allowed to broadcast their own perspective through their own channels (Twitch for the most part). While this is generally uncommon in esports outside of influencer-driven competitions like Twitch Rivals, it has been a standard practice for Fortnite competitions since the game’s early days.
