Microsoft agreed to pay game streaming star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins between $20 million and $30 million per year to join its Mixer streaming platform and leave incumbent leader Twitch, according to a new report from CNN detailing the arms race among tech giants to land big names for their streaming services.
- Ninja is one of several high-profile streamers recently poached from Twitch, which Amazon bought for close to $1 billion in 2014, by the likes of Mixer, Facebook and YouTube. CNN reported that streamers with 10,000 or more concurrent views on Twitch are receiving offers of more than $10 million annually while smaller streamers can get up to $1 million.
- In a sign that the defections are taking a toll on Twitch, the number of hours watched by fans on the platform in the fourth quarter dropped 10 percent compared to the previous quarter, according to a recent annual report from Streamlabs and Newzoo.
- However, Twitch remains the clear leader, according to the report, with more than four times the number of hours watched on the platform than the next closest competitor, YouTube. Twitch also dominates the number of hours played by streamers, with a 4X advantage over Mixer.
