Top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins was paid $1 million by the game’s publisher, EA Entertainment, to stream Apex Legends at launch, sources told Reuters.
Ninja started playing Apex in the date of its release, Feb. 5, and was paid around a million dollars for his hours streaming the game and for some of the sponsored tweets he made. Ninja always made clear he was being sponsored by EA at that time, but he never revealed how much money was tied to his contract.
Related: How much money does Ninja make?
This represents about half of the money Ninja reportedly earns a month while streaming Fortnite: Battle Royale without being directly sponsored by its developer, Epic Games. Reuters said that representatives for EA and Ninja declined to comment on the values of the sponsorship contract.
Other famous streamers like Michael “shroud” Grzesiek were also sponsored by EA to promote Apex in the first days after its release, but it’s unclear how much money these other streamers received.
Apex streams sponsored by EA seem to have helped the game grow considerably. Apex surpassed three million players only three days after its release, and has now over 50 million downloads across all platforms.
Ninja’s sponsorship deal with EA is apparently over, since he’s only streamed Apex Legends twice since Feb. 22. He’s back to streaming Fortnite most of the time.
