Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins Joins GameSquare As Innovation Chief To Help Esports Firm Reach Profitability

Tyler Blevins has done more than anyone to drag gaming into mainstream consciousness. Over the past decade, the streamer known as Ninja has led a generation of gamers who turned a hobby into a legitimate career and eventually a multimillion-dollar fortune. Now, at 31, Blevins says he’s starting to think about what life could be like after streaming.

Blevins took the first step toward that future on Wednesday with the announcement that he’ll join GameSquare, the gaming venture 40%-owned by billionaires Jerry Jones and John Goff, as its chief innovation officer. It’s a “nice little fancy title,” Blevins says, one that comes with 1 million stock options and another 1 million restricted stock units in the publicly traded company.

“I think it’s a little bit of me looking for the next step, something to look forward to and stepping outside my comfort zone,” Blevins tells Forbes. “I haven’t stepped out of it for a long time when it comes to doing something outside of streaming.”

Blevins says he’ll continue to create content under the Complexity brand, which is the esports organization under the GameSquare umbrella, while working behind-the-scenes with the company on strategy and its relationships with brands. He’ll be the face of the forthcoming Ninja Labs, a program which has yet to be fully sketched out but will include co-ownership of tangible products and intellectual property both for himself and for creators within an incubator program that will be developed. He says he expects his role to grow over time.

It’s an attention-grabbing move for GameSquare, which in November announced a deal to merge with NASDAQ-traded Engine Gaming and Media. Engine is currently trading for around $1.40. GameSquare will own 60% of the combined entity and retain its name. Together, the two companies recorded roughly $70 million in revenue over the past year, giving them impressive scale. Profitability, however, remains in question.

Gaming has long been considered the future of entertainment, with the nagging uncertainty of just when that future will begin. Esports organizations boast millions of online followers, sports-inspired branding and rosters of popular gaming talent, and in recent years several private teams have raised money at valuations exceeding several hundred million dollars, which far outpaced their respective business capabilities.

“I think for me it was more of not wanting to get left behind,” Jones told Forbes in September about his purchase of Complexity in 2017. Jones, best known as the Dallas Cowboys owner, and real estate tycoon Goff, whose properties include the Canyon Ranch spa in Arizona, have since combined to invest around $40 million of cash, stock, equity or credit in GameSquare.

Recent developments, however, have exposed the weaknesses in viability and scalability of these types of organizations. Layoffs at 100 Thieves and FaZe Clan’s stock free fall, from a market cap over $1 billion to under $50 million, show the industry has yet to come up with a solution to its fundamental question: how to translate massive audiences and brand enthusiasm into reliable profits.

Even the title “esports organizations” is an incomplete and perhaps outdated shorthand for companies that often perform many functions unrelated to competitive gaming. In fact, esports itself has proven to be a consistent money-losing proposition for teams across the industry. Instead, organizations have attempted to build their businesses on the backs of successful creators, merchandising or proprietary technology.

GameSquare, for example, sees esports as a “marketing expense,” says CEO Justin Kenna. He claims a more diversified model for his company, which owns a content studio and a media agency in addition to the esports, audience data and merchandising found elsewhere. Keeping everything in house keeps costs lower, but also allows the company to execute deals and campaigns for talent across any organization.

GameSquare’s goal is a total end-to-end network for its own talent, building up properties separate from the content they produce on their own. In fact, the company doesn’t take a split of online AdSense revenue from the content created by their talent, instead focusing on what they believe are higher-margin businesses, which could include longform storytelling on mainstream streaming platforms or toys in Walmart.

Kenna says the combined GameSquare and Engine, which are scheduled to complete the merger in late March, will be cash-flow positive by the end of the year, not accounting for significant costs associated with the tie-up.

If successful, it would be a big step toward starting to rebuild the reputation of the industry. Even so, it remains to be seen how big these organizations can become. In October, before the bubble burst, Kenna told D Magazine that a $1 billion valuation was in the company’s “near future.” Now, GameSquare’s market cap hovers around $40 million and Engine’s at $23 million. Kenna says the company is now focusing on business fundamentals and innovation, the latter of which falls squarely under the job description of Ninja, their latest C-suite executive.

“I think the reason I joined Complexity and joined this partnership with GameSquare is because I believe that they have the ability to surpass all the obstacles that a lot of the other organizations have been faced with,” Blevins tells Forbes. “There’s going to be pressure on my end to help develop the company, and obviously make sure we’re doing innovative things, but it’s not going to be all on me. I signed with a great team.”

Justin Birnbaum contributed additional reporting to this story.