This one grabbed me the moment the counter screamed past €11 million and chat went feral. ZEvent 2025 – the French charity marathon helmed by Zerator and Dach – closed in Montpellier with €16,179,096 raised for multiple associations, a new world record for a charity livestream by their tally. Forty-nine streamers were on site, another 276 dialed in remotely, and the whole thing felt less like a stream and more like a coordinated raid on everyone’s wallets (for good). Beneficiaries included Association Française des Aidants, Helebor, La Ligue contre le Cancer, Nightline, and Pôle Enfance (Le Rire Médecin, Sourire à la Vie, L’Envol, Sparadrap).
The opening hours set a pace, but the structure is what made it pop. ZEvent leaned into three donation engines: donation goals (classic “do X if we hit Y”), a timed T-shirt drop, and the new “battle boosts” — chat-fueled showdowns where donations literally deal damage or heal a streamer/team’s HP. The moment the first shirts went live overnight Saturday to Sunday, the pot catapulted past €7 million. By early Sunday evening, €11 million was in the rearview, and nearly another million in shirt revenue plugged straight into the total.
Then the sprint. Battle boosts turned chat wars into a science — fast, legible, and wildly effective. Layer on ZLAN fever: a heated push to lock Street Fighter 6, Mage Arena, and Satisfactory into the event’s competitive slate. Led by a fired-up MisterMV, SF6 muscled its way onto the program alongside Satisfactory, giving fight game and factory-head communities a reason to pile in. It wasn’t just noise; it created a narrative for viewers to back with their euros. If you’ve watched enough charity marathons, you recognize the formula — incentive + urgency + fandom — but ZEvent’s execution was razor sharp this time.
ZEvent’s arc is wild. From €170,770 in 2016 to €451k, then €1.09M, €3.51M, €5.72M, €10.06M, €10.18M, and €10.15M across subsequent editions — the curve flattened the last two years. Zerator himself has talked about fatigue. So 2025’s leap to €16.18M isn’t just “bigger number go brrr”; it signals a smart pivot. By opening the doors to 276 remote streamers while keeping 49 on site, they scaled without losing the on-the-floor energy that makes ZEvent a spectacle.
It also puts the crown back in Francophone hands. MrBeast — who even chipped in a donation here — previously set the livestream charity bar at over $12M. ZEvent just cleared that in euros. Individual performances were bonkers too: Domingo cracked €1.4M alone; Antoine Daniel and Zerator both surpassed €1M. First-timer SylvainLyve crossed €400k, AngleDroit blasted past €568k, and remote participants ranged from a few hundred to tens of thousands — even into the high six figures in some cases. The spirit of it all? Former colleague Antistar raised €7,630.27 and paid with his beard and mustache. It’s not just whales; it’s thousands of smaller pushes adding up.
What stood out to me wasn’t only the tech and tactics — it was how quickly ZEvent stabilized after pre-event friction. Some invite choices ruffled feathers and some notable faces stayed off-site (MisterMV among them for most of the weekend), but a published charter/code of conduct cooled the discourse. That matters. Charity marathons live or die on community trust, and ZEvent has learned to address drama without sinking the vibe.
On the donation design: battle boosts are ridiculously effective, but they flirt with turning charity into a meta-game where streamers “lose” for winning too hard or vice versa. I’m fine with it — we’ve had incentive wars at GDQ-style events for years — but transparency is key. Make the rules simple, keep the pacing readable, and don’t overuse the lever. The merch timing was smart too; dropping shirts deep into the run gives latecomers a tangible way to chip in, and here it added close to a million euros during the crucial stretch.
There’s also the question of breadth vs. focus. Splitting funds across several orgs (aidants, cancer, mental health, children’s care) fits ZEvent’s big-tent identity and brings in more communities. The flip side is messaging fragmentation, but the total raised made that a non-issue this year. If anything, it showed the French scene’s ability to rally around causes that touch real lives, not just headline-friendly slogans.
The obvious question: does this scale again next year? Maybe — but chasing records for their own sake burns people out. The hybrid model is the path forward: a strong physical hub for spectacle, a huge remote net for reach, and a handful of well-timed mechanics (boosts, merch, competitive stakes) to orchestrate the finale. The ZLAN cross-pollination with SF6, Mage Arena, and Satisfactory was a masterstroke; if that becomes a recurring pipeline, ZEvent won’t need “bigger,” it’ll just need “sharper.”
ZEvent 2025 raised €16.18M and reclaimed the charity livestream crown by blending an expanded remote roster with ruthless donation design. Battle boosts, a smart merch drop, and ZLAN-fueled hype turned the final hours into a clinic in community-driven fundraising — and a reminder that, when it clicks, French Twitch is a powerhouse.
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