Ninja made his return to Twitch for good yesterday. And while he didn’t attract the same level of viewership he once did in 2018, he says he’s prepared to put in the hours on stream to get back to the top of Twitch.
Prior to leaving Twitch for Mixer in the fall of 2019, Ninja was one of the top streamers on the platform for the year. In 2018, he had more than twice the hours watched of any other channel.
Coming back yesterday, Ninja showed fans a little bit of the streamaholic attitude that got him to the top of Twitch in the first place with a 10-hour stream that racked up nearly 700,000 hours watched, according to Twitch stat tracker SullyGnome.
His average viewership wasn’t quite at the same level of Shroud or Dr Disrespect’s return, but with 67,811 viewers, his debut stream showed some potential sustainability that the other return streams perhaps did not.
Ninja played an abundance of games. After starting out with Just Chatting, Ninja played a little bit of Fall Guys to chill with his viewers and let him know how he’s been doing before doing an “After Dark” stream in which he played Among Us with other content creators while enjoying some Bud Light Seltzers. After that, he spent a little bit of time playing some VALORANT to end the stream.
While his peak viewership came at the beginning of his stream with around 110,000 viewers, Ninja’s strongest average viewership came while he was playing Fall Guys in the afternoon with 76,100.
His five hours of Among Us gameplay averaged 66,243 viewers with a peak of 77,126. But during that portion of his stream, he was playing with numerous other content creators, including DrLupo and TimTheTatman, and was a prominent part of their broadcast as well.
Ninja knows he’s not on the same level that he once was—and during the first 30 minutes of his stream, he admitted as much.
“I know I’m going to have to work and grind a shitload to get back up there,” he said. “And I intend to do so. Get ready for like a lot of streams.”
With more hours of airtime as well as new alerts and overlays, the crazy-haired streamer hopes he can attract one of the top audiences on Twitch consistently once again.
While he didn’t openly admit it, he didn’t seem to care too much that he didn’t receive the half a million viewers Shroud did when he returned to Twitch from Mixer just one month ago.
“There was almost no hype,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of time to work with, and quite frankly, I just wanted to get back to streaming. So there wasn’t time to put together an elaborate announcement with a week of teasing. We kind of just threw it together. We wanted to keep it simple.”
When he moved to Mixer, Ninja’s focus strayed away from streaming slightly. During his stream yesterday, he said that his goal after joining Mixer was to expand his brand and also help Mixer grow. He wasn’t as focused on grinding out 60 hours of airtime a week like he was on Twitch before he left.
Ninja’s first stream back might not have been the same grand reception some may have expected, but the way the returning star handled the stream made it clear that Ninja is here for the grind once again.
