Ninja and PewDiePie are teaming up for the first time this week for the Friday Fortnite tournament. Popular Fortnite Twitch streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins joins up with Youtube content creator Felic “PewDiePie” Kjellberg for the second week of the competition.
Friday Fortnite was originally established as an unofficial tournament before Epic Games had developed the infrastructure to host its own official events. The tournaments were massive in their success and brought together the most influential Twitch streamers in the game until Epic finally began its own tournaments.
Organizer Keem (@Keemstar) stated on Twitter that the return of Friday Fortnite was a complete success:
As always, the restart of the tournament was not without its own drama. Recently Twitch streamer and competitive Fortnite player Tfue has publicly decried the egregious conditions of the contract offered to him by esports organization FaZe Clan and has openly stated that the group takes too much of his earnings in a one-sided agreement. FaZe meanwhile has responded by stating that in total they have only made $60,000 from Tfue, and to that point, donated the same amount to the tournament in order to supply its prize pool.
For this second week’s event on June 7, Ninja and PewDiePie will be competing as one of the 32 teams of 2 in matches that should take around 3 hours to complete. Last weeks top-three duo teams were:
- First: NRMrSavage/BenjyFishy
- Second: Ghost Kamo/Issa
- Third: Ninja/Reverse2K
Individually, both Ninja and PewDiePie command a strong following of viewers. While last week’s viewership of Friday Fortnite surpassed the 10 million mark, the joining of these two iconic individuals is likely to shatter that record.
From a marketing perspective, the pairing of the two is going to be great for business. Ninja is currently sponsored by Red Bull Esports and has 20 Million YouTube subscribers along with a line of merchandise. His average viewership is 40,000 per week, and through the “Support a Creator” code within Fortnite, there is no shortage of revenue coming in. Pairing with PewDiePie is sure to spike the viewership numbers of each content creator.
On the other hand, there is always the possibility for one of the two men to go off the rails and engage in some controversial behavior. PewDiePie recently landed himself in hot water by shouting out to an anti-Semitic YouTube Channel, while Ninja has also had issues controlling his own words in the heat of a match, and more recently, quipped about the legitimacy of the World Health Organization’s recent classification of gaming disorder.
It isn’t too hard to see his perspective however, as playing games all day has made thing young man a millionaire and is likely to continue doing so for years to come.
Check out the Friday Fortnite tournament this June 7 to see how well both Ninja and PewDiePie do against everyone else.