There’s one topic of discussion that hits each awards show every year: These babies are loooooong. Nate Bargatze’s big move at the 2025 Emmy Awards was designed to keep things nice and tight. Bargatze explained at the beginning of the show that he was going to personally donate $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Club of America … if people kept their acceptance speeches concise. “Every second you go over 45 seconds, we will deduct $1,000 away from the Boys & Girls Club,” he said. “That is tough. It is brutal. What are you going to do, though, you know? I can’t change it. This is the game I made up, and these are the rules.”
But the winners also had an opportunity to get some more dollars on the board. For every second under 45 in any given award speech, $1,000 went back on the board. For example, Seth Rogen’s first win of the night netted the org six large. In essence, Bargatze is that guy you do not want to be at a restaurant, leaving a tip on the table and implicitly threatening the waitstaff with financial hardship if they don’t cater to his whims. Fun stuff. So how much did the Boys & Girls Club get in the end?
Who won (or lost) the Boys & Girls Club the most money?
Some award accepters kept things briefer than others. Last Week Tonight won twice and while accepting, both John Oliver and head writer Dan O’Brien speed ran their thanks. “Fuck you, Nate Bargatze, that is a lot of money for you,” Oliver said at the end of his speech, adding, “and you can add a ‘fuck’ to the swear jar as well.” The show seemed to pause the clock for youngest male to win an acting Emmy Owen Cooper, thank God. But Stephen Colbert waxed poetical as he accepted the award for Outstanding Talk Series. As he should! It seems this experiment was a failure. The people who adhered to the bit were cheated out of a core memory, and it became The Bit That Wouldn’t End. Until it did.
How much of Nate Bargatze’s hosting fee is going to charity?
In the end, Bargatze said “Fuck this” (not literally, because of the swear jar) and decided the clock didn’t work. “I can’t imagine doing this ever again,” he said at the end of the night. “CBS is going to add $100,000. I will give $250,000.” That’s a grand total of $350,000 for the Boys & Girls Club and a few extra corporate gigs for Bargatze to make up that shortfall in his books.
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The Boys & Girls Club were hanging on every word of every acceptance speech.
