Selling sex: why investors are wary of OnlyFans despite record profits

OnlyFans, the social media site where "creators" post mostly sexual content for paying subscribers, is quietly up for sale for a reported price of $8 billion (£5.9 billion).

But it could be worth much more, said the Financial Times, if it could shift from being "not safe for work entertainment" – a.k.a. porn – to being "less edgy". Its business model, which takes a 20% fee from video makers, is versatile and scalable, much like others that trade in user-generated content, such as Reddit and Roblox.

'Betting on reinvention'

OnlyFans was founded in 2016 and grew rapidly during the early pandemic. In the year to November 2023 it generated revenues of $6.6 billion (£4.8 billion), having posted $375 million (£275 million) in 2020, said The Times. Ukrainian-born American Leonid Radvinsky bought the company in 2018 and, as sole owner of OnlyFans' holding company, Fenix International Ltd, has made more than $1 billion in dividends in just three years.

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But tighter regulation of adult content in some US states has made investors wary. Any buyer would be "betting on reinvention, or at least diversification", said the FT, a transition that OnlyFans is attempting by luring chefs and fitness influencers to post.

A stock market flotation is also being considered but OnlyFans' reputation is a hindrance. Complaints have been found in US police and court records that child-abuse material and non-consensual pornography has appeared on the site since 2019 and there are cases of sex traffickers using the platform to abuse and exploit women, said The Times. And in March, OnlyFans was fined just over £1 million by Ofcom, the UK's media and telecommunications regulator, for failing to provide accurate information about how it was implementing age checks.

'Fame equaliser'

Some non-celebrity creators defend OnlyFans for giving them autonomy and the opportunity to earn millions, although the average annual payout is about $1,300 (£950) per creator, according to Mashable.

OnlyFans' appeal to creators is deftly illustrated by Rufi Thorpe's comic novel "Margo's Got Money Troubles", in which a university student becomes a single mother and turns to OnlyFans as a creatively fulfilling and financially rewarding lifeline. Being an OnlyFans creator offers the characters "a way out", said Nick Hornby in The New York Times. "We want it for them, and they deserve it" – which is the best-case scenario for the platform as potential investors would see it.

The platform is a "fame equaliser, allowing unknown individuals to rise to prominence and build a large fanbase", said The Independent. But OnlyFans also normalises the "commodification of a person's body, sexuality, and privacy", with creators becoming "globally known for performing sexual stunts that, until recently, would only have been conceived of in the farthest extremes of pornography".