It was a remarkably entertaining telethon. More importantly, it was an incredibly successful one. But unless you’re tied in closely with the gamer community, you probably didn’t even know about it.
Sean McLoughlin, aka Jacksepticeye, fired up his YouTube channel Sunday afternoon and raised over $100K for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and he made it look effortless.
“Three hours and twenty one minutes and you raised one hundred thousand dollars,” McLoughlin shouted in astonishment as he watched the total at the top of his channel reach it’s goal. “Excuse my swearing, but what the fu**! That’s insane, that’s absolutely incredible. You guys have done a wonderful thing. I’m very proud of this community and what we did just now.”
It isn’t the first time McLoughlin has raised that kind of money for a charity, but it was the quickest. The 28 year old is now in his fifth year as a professional gamer and his channel has racked up over 20 million subscribers.
Jerry Lewis held many successful telethons with the help of live TV.
In the old days, telethons would need live television, phone banks, a band and celebrity emcee to generate mass donations. McLoughlin, who just sat and spoke to his audience, not playing any video games, needed just a few hours to tap into his deep well of social media followers to make it happen.
“St. Jude is a charity I’ve known about for a very long time,” McLoughlin said. “They’ve done a lot of great work in the community. St. Jude’s is a pediatric hospital that helps children with cancer, but they also help children with catastrophic illnesses. So people who are going through some very big life changing illnesses, they try to help out in that regard.”
Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since it opened more than 50 years ago.
At the end of his four hour broadcast from Los Angeles, McLoughlin, and his supporters, had raised a total of $111,349.23 for St. Jude. When added to the fundraisers he’s held throughout the year, McLoughlin is well on his way to reaching the $1 million mark in 2018.
Sean McLoughlin raised over $100K from his social media subscribers in just over three hours.
In this age of so much division and animosity, McLoughlin says the success of online telethons prove people are still willing to dig deep to help out a good cause.
“People are good-natured on a base level,” McLoughlin said. “People just want to do good things. And if you give them a cause to sit down and make themselves feel like they can have an impact they will shower you with the amount of good they have.”
All of McLoughlin’s videos start with him saying “Top of the mornin’ to ya laddies! This is Jacksepticeye!” Since 2012, his Irish accent (he was born in Athlone, Ireland) and contagious energy have helped him amass millions of fans, and billions of clicks on his videos.
A natural entertainer with an uncanny ability to connect to his fans, and raise a lot of money for charities, it could be just a matter of time until McLoughlin challenges Ryan Seacrest as the busiest man in Hollywood.
Like a boss.