Emmy Winners Nearly Cost the Boys & Girls Clubs $100,000

Everyone hates when awards shows go long. And the number one reason why they go long are the acceptance speeches. They’re the ultimate variable. People have waited their whole lives to win a prize and to thank their mom, their grandfather, their first drama teacher, their agent, their team, their manager, their dog, their whatever. See? Just writing the first names that came to my mind went on for way too long.

As part of an amusing effort to cut down on longer speeches — and to generate coverage like this very article — this year’s Emmys host Nate Bargatze instituted a little game that ran throughout the show. To start the night, Bargatze announced a $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America … with a catch.

Every Emmy winner got 45 seconds to give their speech. They could thank whoever they wanted in that time. But for every second their speech went under 45 seconds, Bargatze would donate an additional $1,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs. So if someone spoke for 40 seconds, that was $5,000 more dollars for the kids. Yay kids!

But there was a cruel catch as well. For every second a winner went over the 45 second deadline, Bargatze would subtract $1,000.

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So the biggest storyline of the night was not whether The Studio would win every award (spoilers: it pretty much did) or whether anyone could stop Adolescence from running the table in its categories (spoilers: they could not). No, all the suspense was on that donation. At one point it was up to $106,000. Hey that’s great! At another point it was all the way down to -$26,000. Stephen Colbert talked a lot after he won Best Talk Series. Can you blame him? CBS canceled his Emmy winning show.

At the end of the night, Bargatze didn’t even share the final total with the audience, saying it was so low it was embarrassing. Rather than force the Boys & Girls Clubs of America to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to make good on the wager, CBS and Bargatze said they would give a total donation of $350,000 to the organization.

Kudos to the Emmys and Bargatze for giving generously to a good cause, and to adding a little excitement to the Emmys. Jeers to those darn awards winners who could not keep their speeches short and could have helped raise even more money for these deserving kids. Oh well.

See the full list of winners at this year’s Emmys here.