Two recent sporting events have netted the Boys and Girls Club of America around $3 million dollars thanks to the attractive power of great athletes.

People may complain about the excess hubris surrounding the Lebron James announcement last week when the basketball star created a torrent of media buzz around which city he would choose to play for next year. The Boys and Girls Clubs were not among them.

The venerable non-profit organization expected to reap $2.5 million from a deal crafted by James with ESPN to donate all advertising revenue generated from a portion of the much-anticipated show.

The windfall for Boys and Girls Clubs (BGCA) did not stop there, however. Major League Baseball’s annual Home Run Derby raised $573,000 for the kids’ clubs last night. 

For one day — July 13, 1985 — an unprecedented charity telethon called Live Aid mesmerized an estimated 1.4 billion of the planet’s 5 billion people, in one of the biggest, most ambitious concert events ever staged. Simultaneous shows from two continents at one point attracted 95 percent of the world’s television viewers — an even more incredible statistic when you consider that it happened before the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, text messaging, streaming video and Twitter.

The musical telethon ended up raising more than 200 million dollars for starving people in Ethiopia and around Africa and inspired future shows like Farm Aid and Live 8.

WATCH their 25th anniversary report or read the article from MTV...