OnlyFans: The First Ten Years
Just before its tenth anniversary, OnlyFans is generating about $7 billion a year. It is filled with big names of actresses, singers, child stars, and athletes, and is growing its own celebrities, such as Israel's Yarden Lasri. All of this would not have happened without a profound change in how pornographic content is perceived and marketed, but the legitimacy that OnlyFans enjoys does not necessarily stem from sexual openness — and the things it does stem from are quite worrying.
In November, OnlyFans will mark ten years since its launch, and the path the subscription content platform has taken is a fascinating story, both about it and about us. At the beginning of its journey, it was not at all aimed at the sexual content that is associated with its name today, but tried to attract musicians and influencers. Later, it became synonymous with pornography and was pushed into taboo areas, while today it is mainstream. Big names earn a fortune on it, prime-time series build plot lines on it, and the media covers the stars born within it as legitimate celebrities in every respect. It is a strong brand, a huge economic success, and a daily part of our language and culture.
In March of this year, the owner of OnlyFans, Ukrainian billionaire Leonid Radvinsky, passed away at the age of 43. His widow, Ekaterina Chudnovsky, inherited control from him. Two months after Radvinsky's death, 16% of the company was sold to the American investment fund Architect Capital for $535 million, based on a valuation of $3.15 billion. The deal was executed after five years of attempts to sell the platform; investors were interested but backed out again and again due to the aversion to pornographic content. Until now.
Sami Sheen, an OnlyFans star and daughter of Charlie Sheen, uploaded a video to TikTok in which she claimed that her father had not given her a dime in recent years. "He doesn't help me with anything, f***ing anything," she said there, "and he didn't buy me my beach house. My tits bought it."
The Architect Capital deal can be explained in terms of viability: OnlyFans currently has revenues of about $7 billion a year. The vast majority goes into the pockets of content creators — according to reports in the economic press in the USA, since its inception, the site has transferred more than $25 billion to them — and yet, the company takes a commission that leaves it with a profit of almost $700 million a year before taxes, and all this with fewer than 50 salaried employees. But the deal testifies not only to the strength of OnlyFans, but also to the profound change in the status of the goods it sells — for better or for worse.
No favors from dad
When OnlyFans was launched in 2016, it presented itself as a site where content creators offer exclusive paid content. However, the previous ventures of the founder, Tim Stokely, were adult content sites — and he identified the target audience exactly. As evidence, and unlike what is common on social networks, for example, OnlyFans did not impose a blanket ban on uploading sexual content.
In 2018, Radvinsky bought the company (Stokely moved to the CEO position), and quietly, content for adults only began to appear on it. Two years later, with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and in some ways thanks to it, the breakthrough came: in April 2020, Beyoncé mentioned OnlyFans in a line in the Savage remix, the first time the name was said in the mainstream without the context of shame. In August of that year, Bella Thorne joined the site — a former Disney star who broke out along with Zendaya, but was left with nothing. Thorne broke the platform with revenues of $1 million in the first 24 hours.
The change is summarized this week by Yarden Lasri in one sentence, for which there is no more accurate summary for the entire decade: "I used to say that I was a nude model and that I do OnlyFans, and people would ask 'What is that?'. Today it's like: 'Oh, okay'."
In 2021, rapper Danielle Bregoli, who performs under the stage name Bhad Bhabie and became famous on Dr. Phil's show, joined OnlyFans. She opened her account on her 18th birthday and raked in $1 million in six hours, a moment that also bothered the platform's supporters. In any case, it was quite forgotten when YouTuber Corinna Kopf made a similar amount in 48 hours.
Even at 60
In the last three years, more and more big names have joined the platform. In 2023, rapper Iggy Azalea arrived, who claims she earned a fortune from the site, and actress Drea de Matteo from The Sopranos, who simply said that OnlyFans saved her house from foreclosure. Sonja Morgan from The Real Housewives of New York joined at 60, and also top tennis player Nick Kyrgios, who proved that even active athletes struggle financially, and are no longer ashamed to supplement their income with nudity.
In 2024, singer Lily Allen began selling photos of her feet on OnlyFans, and then revealed the number that says it all: almost 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify bring her less money than 1,000 subscribers who pay for photos of her feet.
Israel will only go backwards
The familiar names, the big money, and the growing legitimacy of OnlyFans perhaps cause a feeling of change in the perception of sexuality in the Western world — except that if there was such a change, certainly in America, it was in the opposite direction: the USA of the last decade has only become more conservative. And speaking of conservatism, Sophie Rain, 21, from Florida, who is also the biggest star in the history of the platform — she earned more than $100 million in her three years there — claims that she is a devout Christian and a virgin who is saving herself for her husband.
It seems that the tolerance towards OnlyFans, in the USA in particular and in the West in general, stems from the fact that it translated sexuality into the only language that capitalist culture respects unconditionally: entrepreneurship. After all, there are no porn stars in it; there are content creators who are entrepreneurs. There is no sex industry, there is a small business of an independent woman who is closing her parents' debts or trying to support herself.
Television did not create the normalization, it only signed off on it. This process has an academic name. Sociologist Gail Dines coined the term "pornification of society" years ago: a culture in which explicit sexual content is not only tolerated but celebrated, in which hardcore becomes mainstream and the shocking becomes routine.
You will break down mentally
There is one secret that the OnlyFans environment prefers not to talk about: behind many of the successful accounts, there is not one creator in front of the keyboard, but a management agency that operates a team of chatters — men from third-world countries who conduct intimate conversations on behalf of the stars. They work in shifts for a few dollars an hour, according to organized scripts designed to maximize tips. Bottom line, the lonely man who pays for the feeling that someone is thinking about him is actually corresponding with a contract worker on the other side of the world who is simultaneously conducting dozens of identical conversations.
On the illusion of the gold mine, Lasri says: "Lots of girls, unfortunately, started because of the glamour in it. They always come to me with 'I want to make money, explain to me how to open'. If it's only for the money, don't do it. Most girls don't earn at all. And even if they do, the reactions from the family, from friends, from the environment — it kills us. It's not worth it just for the money. You have to love it, and you have to have skin like an elephant. Otherwise, you will break down mentally."
