| Title | The newest ESPN cover athlete is a Fortnite streamer |
| Author | Nick Diamon |
| Posted in | News |
| When | September 18, 2018 |
This is Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. He's going to be featured on the cover of the October edition of ESPN The Magazine. A first for the publication. If you watch Fortnite gameplay streams, Ninja's work is inescapable..
But he’s not an athlete.
But he has a Red Bull sponsorship!
Serious question: is Ninja good? Or is he just entertaining?
Is he Joe Montana or PewDiePie?
I don’t watch him but I’m almost certain he is very, very good. The stats back it up, with a 41% win rate and 11 kill/death ratio:
https://fortnitetracker.com/profile/pc/ninja
The entertainment value from battle royale streamers comes from an aggressive playstyle that emphasizes getting into a lot of fights, which isn’t necessarily the best approach when trying to win every game.
Regarding the topic, every time Ninja comes up I think about the next huge streamer 10 years from now playing a game that hasn’t even been conceived yet. Will he or she earn 10 million dollars per month? It’s only going to get bigger from here.
Ten years? How about one or two years? I doubt the majority of people that follow Ninja now had even heard about him a year ago.
The high-end streamer phenomenon is fascinating to me because of a few things. First, the cycle seems much faster than other “sports entertainment” media. Streaming stars come up, gain a gigantic following, then disappear really quickly. Second, being a popular streamer has little to do with being a high-end player. You can suck and still get crazy good streaming numbers. Finally, there are no good metrics (yet) for identifying the next big streamer, but advertisers and game publishers are hot to find them and partner with them early.
