Tyler Blevins (Ninja): Turning a Hobby into a Million Dollar Celebrity Career

Tyler playing Fortnite at his own tournament, Ninja Vegas

Tyler Blevins also known as his alias, Ninja, has revolutionized how people see gaming. Around 20 or 30 years ago, gaming was seen as a hobby, being played by mainly kids. Now today gaming is seen as a new opportunity for a people who have a passion for playing games instead of doing a labor-intensive, or sit in your desk for hours and hours job. The only thing is you need to rise to the top to be flowing with money and an internet sensation. And well, Ninja did just that on a much higher level. He began in his basement playing video games streaming in front of a few 100 people to the man that's been on the Ellen Show, The Jimmy Fallon Show, getting hundreds of thousands of people watching him, endorsements, and the list goes on and on. Ninja turned his passion of video games into a multi-million dollar career as well as gaining millions of people following and watching him. 

It all started when he was a kid playing video games with his brothers, Jonathon and Chris, and his dad. As his gaming passion grew, he knew he was destined to take in gaming as his job. He went to college unsure whether to go full-onto his gaming career. In college, he played on a soccer team, worked as an employee at Noodles and Company, and streamed. It was too much. A few years into college, he decided to drop out and pursue his dream of being a professional gamer. 

In 2009, he began playing Halo 3 professionally, slowly gaining more and more people watching him. He continued to play the Halo games, appearing in tournaments alongside his fellow gamers on his gaming teams. He finally began getting popular.

Tyler playing Halo 5 Guardians

And skipping years ahead, in 2017, he began playing H1Z1 instead of the classic Halo games he played for many years. Playing H1Z1 got him more popular, but he didn't know what was ahead of him. After H1Z1, he slid over to the game PUBG (PLayer Unkown Battlegrounds) where his hard work over many years started to pile up. In September of 2017, Fortnite: Battle Royale was released. Little did Tyler know that this game would change his life forever.

He quickly hopped onto the Fortnite game as its growth of popularity was advancing fairly quickly, him hoping he could be number one in the game as he always had dreamed in the past games he played. He streamed his Fortnite gameplay daily to days end, sometimes even into the next day with the same exact energy he had during when the sun was out. It was an addiction for him and the growth of popularity of Fortnite coincided with the popularity of himself and his streaming channel. 

Tyler playing with his fellow gamer and also his best friend
Dr. Lupo (Ben) in a Fortnite: Battle Royale Game

In September of 2017, he had 500,000 followers, and just in 6 months he had little over doubled his followers on Twitch. His popularity kept growing, which in return attracted famous celebrities Drake, Travis Scott, Juju Smith-Schuster, and Kim Dotcom in March of 2018.  An achievement no gamer got before, getting celebrities involved in your gaming career. The stream including only Drake, Travis Scott, and Juju Smith-Schuster set the Twitch record for the most viewed single individual stream. Ninja knew at this point that Fortnite was the key to becoming a famous internet personality, which at that point he was already rising up the search pages of Google and the tops of Twitch.

Thumbnail of Youtube video that included Tyler (second to left), Drake (Last one on left),

Travis Scott (second to right), and Juju Smith-Schuster (Last one on right)

In April of 2018, Tyler broke his own viewing record (667,000 live viewers) on Twitch called Ninja Vegas. This tournament featured Tyler against many other Fortnite players, Tyler creating and hosting the tournament in the Luxor Hotel and Casino. If a player defeated him, they received the prize of $2,500, and if Tyler won he got $2,500, which in return went to the charity of his choice (Alzheimer's Association).

Tyler continued to stream daily, seven days a week, varying time to time with special guests such as Marshmellow. His audience kept growing larger and larger ranging from many different ages. 

As of this post, on Tyler's Youtube channel, he has 20.4 million Subscribers, gaining a little more than 19 million Subscribes since of January of 2018. Tyler gained 19 million subscribers in about a year, that taking most Youtubers 5 years to accomplish if they're very lucky. As well as his Youtube channel booming, his Twitch channel was the main cause. Tyler streams on Twitch and edits his streams into single videos that he posts on his Youtube channel. As of today, Tyler has 12.6 million followers on Twitch, the most for a single channel on Twitch right now.

As I also mentioned in the beginning, Tyler has starred on the Ellen Show twice, once on the Jimmy Fallon Show, a few endorsements including Red Bull and Uber Eats, appearing on the ESPN Magazine, being the first professional gamer to appear on the cover, creating an album named Ninjawerks: Vol. 1 featuring original songs by electronic music acts that can be found on Spotify and much more that is too much too name. Tyler has been everywhere, appearing in many different places because of his extremely fast growth of popularity.  

ESPN Magazine featuring Tyler (Top left), Ninjawerks Vol.1 on Spotify (Top right), Tyler on the Ellen Show (Bottom left),  and Tyler doing the "Pon Pon" (A song he plays daily on his streams) on the Jimmy Fallon Show (Bottom right)  

Tyler Blevins was a man with a dream who turned his hobby into a profitable job and career. Reports were saying in September of 2018 that he earns $500,000 monthly from streaming Fortnite, as well as gaining attention from the press, video game enthusiasts, and many more. Tyler shocked the video game industry showing that gaming is a rising profession that is the same as being an actor or a singer, similar popularity and relatable incomes. Tyler's extreme growth rate of popularity was highly unexpected, but no one's sure how long it will last. 

A shout out to Ninja's Youtube channel and his Twitch channel.