Ninja becomes No. 1 most-followed channel on Mixer

After his surprise move from Twitch to Microsoft-owned streaming platform Mixer, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has become the site’s top streamer, overtaking previous champion David “TheGrefg” Cánovas.

Blevins has also hit over 1 million subscribers on the platform, although many of those probably came thanks to Mixer and Ninja’s deal to give out free subscriptions for a limited time.

He made his debut on Mixer during Lollapalooza festival, in which he played in Daniel “KEEMSTAR” Keem’s Friday Fortnite tournament with World Cup Solo winner Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf.

Before he even began streaming on Mixer, Blevins reached 500,000 followers solely from his move announcement. Since then, he has been streaming regularly with a schedule.

The milestone shows that Ninja is bigger than just Twitch. At least in the short term, the move appears to have been an astute decision, both in financial terms and his status as a celebrity influencer.

Since his move, Twitch has changed Ninja’s channel on the site to instead advertise other streamers, stating that “The Ninja you’re looking for is in another castle.” As a result of his leave, Blevins’ partner checkmark was also removed from his Twitch profile.

Other streamers are now considering streaming on other platforms if offered a financial deal, including KEEMSTAR and Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm. It’s still unknown how much Blevins was paid to move to Mixer, but the number was surely substantial in order to warrant Twitch’s top streamer to start from scratch.

First, he was Twitch’s king, and now—in a ridiculously small amount of time—Blevins rules yet another streaming service.