Game Theorists raise $3,000,000 on YouTube
Husband and wife duo, Matt “MatPat” Patrick and Stephanie Patrick (aka Game Theorists) hosted their second 8-hour livestream fundraising event benefiting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Key facts
The Event
On December 1, 2020, husband and wife duo, Matt “MatPat” Patrick and Stephanie Patrick hosted their second 8-hour livestream fundraising event benefiting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Hosted on MatPat’s YouTube channel and produced by YouTube Originals, the “Game Theorists $1M Challenge for St. Jude” raised over $3,000,000 in one day.
The all-day event hosted charity representatives, content creators and other personalities to entertain the audience throughout the day. Some of the fun segments included MatPat asking their chat for what they had to draw in a game of Game Theorists Pictionary. These engaging and fun segments helped them easily reach and pass their 1 million dollar goal early in the day.
Inside the numbers
In the final hours of the event donations were flying in at an average 3.8 donations per second and over 13,700 donations in just 60 minutes. As the Game Theorists were pushing ever-closer to $3 million, MatPat interviewed a family that had been helped by the team at St. Jude and he personally thanked donors by name in the last hour of the campaign.
Corporate sponsors
Throughout the day a phone would ring and MatPat would answer and “Jake at State Farm” would add a donation to the campaign from State Farm. In the climactic final moments a doorbell rang, and Jake from State Farm walked on set live and in-person to give Matt and Stephanie an actual “big check” from State Farm Insurance. It was a fun way for State Farm to give to an important cause in a way that was authentic and didn’t feel like a commercial break.