350 million registered accounts, soccer stars like Antoine Griezmann who imitate dances from the game and musicians like Marshmello who have their own skin in the Battle Royale shooter - Fortnite breaks records and continues to set new standards. This article shows you three gamers who became millionaires with Fortnite.
Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins - With YouTube on American TV
If you think of personalities who became famous with Fortnite, you can hardly ignore Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins. The 29-year-old, who was born in Detroit in 1991, is not only one of the biggest stars in Fortnite – with over 24 million subscribers on YouTube and over 16 million followers on Twitch, Ninja has become well known beyond the internet.
In addition to appearances on television shows such as “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon”, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” or “The Masked Singer”, Blevins has also set a new Twitch record for simultaneous viewers on a single channel in 2018 when he streamed with singers Drake and Travis Scott and football star JuJu Smith-Schuster of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It's no wonder that his wife and manager Jessica Blevins, who is a successful influencer herself, says that her telephone won’t stop ringing. According to her own statements, the 26-year-old gets up every morning at 6:00 a.m. and first fights her way through up to 150 emails in which fans, newsrooms and companies want to contact the gaming superstar.
Those who are in such high demand can of course look forward to a full bank account. With live streams on Twitch, videos on YouTube and various advertising deals, Blevins was already able to raise around 10 million US dollars in 2018. There is no end in sight to the hype surrounding ninja, who is one of the most important advertising figures of the world-famous energy drink manufacturer Red Bull. It was only last year that Blevins made headlines and record numbers with his return to Twitch, which he had left only a few months earlier in favor of a gigantic deal with the streaming platform Mixer.
Turner 'Tfue' Tenney - records and scandals
At the age of just 23, Turner Tenney, better known by his nickname Tfue, has already had a few scandals behind him, but also a whole series of records that made him so famous in the first place.
Tenney, Florida-born, dropped out of school early to jump into a working life instead and began his remarkable career as a streamer in Call of Duty, Destiny and HALO. Tfue quickly built up a considerable audience and showed with a record in Destiny that he also has an outstanding talent as a gamer.
Tenney, who grew up with a total of three siblings, ultimately made the big breakthrough with Fortnite. The extremely popular game from Epic Games catapulted Tfue's audience numbers to new heights and made him one of the next big stars on Twitch. 10 million followers on Twitch and 12 million subscribers on YouTube speak for themselves and are just two of many Indicators that illustrate the popularity of the American.
But in addition to enormous successes and another record in Fortnite and thus income in the millions, Tfue also repeatedly attracted attention with scandals. In 2018 he received a 30-day ban on Twitch for a supposedly racist slur. After apologizing and explaining how the statement was meant, Twitch reduced the length of the suspension to one week.
In the same year, Tenney received a permanent ban on his Epic Games account because it was proven that he had traded with several accounts in Fortnite, which violated the terms of use.
The last major scandal in which Tfue was involved was in 2019. Tenney then sued his organization FaZe Clan, claiming that it had induced him to underagend drinking and doing dangerous stunts. In addition, he blamed FaZe Clan for withholding a large part of his advertising income and for forcing an unfair contract on him. In the same year, FaZe Clan filed a counterclaim against Tfue due to the unauthorized publication of contract details.
Kyle 'Bugha' Giersdorf - overnight millionaire at the age of 16
While his school friends probably deliver newspapers or mow the lawn to bump up their pocket money, 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf has become a multimillionaire overnight with Fortnite.
In July 2019, the talent was crowned solo world champion in Fortnite at the Arthur Ashe Stadium, where the tennis elite usually plays in front of more than 23,000 spectators. An insane prize money of 3 million USD and an entry in the history books of esports were the rewards for this outstanding achievement.
And even if Giersdorf became a millionaire overnight at the age of 16, the way there was hard work, in which he was also supported by his family. His mother reports that the Pennsylvania-born Fortnite professional trained 8 to 10 hours a day in preparation for the World Cup.
His father, Glenn Giersdorf, is apparently not entirely uninvolved in his son's success. It was him who introduced the future Fortnite world champion to the world of computer games.
