Twitch star ‘Ninja’ whose real name is Tyler Blevins said that he earned nearly $10 million in 2018 by playing Fortnite: Battle Royale.
The professional gamer has more than 20 million subscribers on video streaming platform YouTube and more than 12.5 million followers on Twitch, a game streaming service. Blevins told CNN that he earned most of that money through advertisement on YouTube and Twitch. Though, he adds that video game tournaments and sponsors such as Samsung and Red Bull contributed to his fortune as well.
Tyler Blevins came under the spotlight when he broke a record in Twitch viewership in March last year. The Fortnite player had streamed himself and famous rap artist Drake playing Fortnite, which was watched live by more than 600,000 people at its peak.
The number successfully broke the all-time concurrent viewers record of Twitch. Ninja, as he is better known, also became the first Twitch streamer to have over 10 million followers.
In September, Blevins was also the first e-sports player to be featured on the cover of ESPN’s magazine. Samsung too announced its own Fortnite contest, in the same month in which one winner would get to play with Blevins aka Ninja and rapper Travis Scott in a squad.
One of the biggest free-to-play games, Fortnite’s popularity skyrocketed in 2018 and the game is now available on seven different gaming platforms which include PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, Mac, iPhone and PC. Fortnite developer Epic Games earned $3 billion in profits in 2018, reported Forbes in December 2018.
Source: financialexpress.com