Offaly Youtube star raises €600k for Covid-19 fight

A YouTube superstar from Offaly held an online fundraiser to help in the battle against Covid-19 this week, and it raised an amazing total of just under €600,000.

Cloghan native Sean McLoughlin, aka 'Jacksepticeye', hosted a marathon live YouTube stream on Tuesday, encouraging his millions of fans and followers to donate to three charities helping with the Coronavirus crisis.

Sean's live web stream lasted for 11 and a half hours, and when it came to an end a whopping $654,884 (€598,094) had been raised. The local man personally donated $100,000 towards the total.

A former Athlone IT student, Sean has hosted many other charity initiatives in the past, but he said none had been quite as successful as this one.

"We have never done a charity stream that's raised that much money in one sitting. It is a colossal amount of money. It's going to do so much good in the world, for so many people," he said.

His live stream was part of a multi-platform digital fundraiser which generated over $1.7 million for Covid-19 relief on April 7, World Health Day.

The money will be distributed to United Way Worldwide; the United Nations Foundation's Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organisation; and Comic Relief US's Red Nose Day.

Sean, who recently turned 30, lived in Athlone for a few years before moving to Brighton, England, in 2017. He has over 23 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, where he posts lively and colourful clips that are mostly based around video games. 

He posted this video today to thank people for their charity donations: