Tyler "Ninja" Blevins made a surprise appearance on YouTube on Wednesday, beginning a livestream on his official channel at around 1:30 p.m. ET.
The stream, which lasted for roughly 90 minutes and was preceded by a tweet on Ninja's official account, peaked at around 150,000 viewers, consistently averaging around the 100,000- to 120,000-viewer mark. Though Ninja has been on YouTube since November 2011 and has amassed over 23.8 million subscribers, this is his first livestream on the platform on his channel.
Ninja played a few games of Fortnite with Tim "Timthetatman" Betar, Ben "DrLupo" Lupo and Jack "CouRageJD" Dunlop. Ninja ended the stream by addressing his viewers, saying, "The stream ... and streams ... there's gonna be a lot more, sooner rather than later."
According to esports insider Rod "Slasher" Breslau on Twitter, Ninja has not signed an official deal with YouTube or another streaming platform, and is currently in negotiations. Wednesday's stream was Ninja's decision, and it was noted in Slasher's tweet that Ninja could also stream at some point on Twitch.
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Ninja, one of the most popular streamers in the industry, became a streaming free agent in late June after Microsoft Mixer, where he was exclusively signed, shut down. Ninja had made the high-profile move to the platform in August 2019. The numbers generated on Ninja's YouTube stream Wednesday eclipse his peak viewership on his Mixer channel, which was 85,876.