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OnlyFans, the UK company that provides a subscription streaming platform for sex workers, sports stars and celebrities, has paid more than $630mn to its owner, Ukrainian-American entrepreneur Leonid Radvinsky, since the start of last year.
The company said it had paid $6.6bn to the content creators who use its platform as a means of reaching their “fans” in 2023, an increase of about $1bn from the previous year.
OnlyFans, which takes a cut of a fifth from the payments made on its platform, has become an increasingly popular way for online “creators” to offer video content directly to consumers.
The number of creator accounts grew to 4.1mn while the total number of fan accounts grew to 305mn, both an increase of almost a third on 2022.
Many of those who use the platform are sex workers, although the company says there is a wide range of content on offer from sports and music to yoga and wellness aimed directly at individual “fans”.
These fans can pay additional “tips”, or extra for on-demand paid content and private messaging, in addition to the subscription fees. All content on the platform is moderated.
In accounts filed at Companies House, UK-based Fenix International, which owns OnlyFans, said revenues grew a fifth to more than $1.3bn.
Pre-tax profits rose to $657mn from $525mn, with $472mn going to Radvinsky through dividends in 2023. However, it said since the end of the year a further $159mn had been paid to its owner.
Keily Blair, chief executive of OnlyFans, said the company “had a strong year in 2023. We have cemented our place as a leading digital entertainment company and a UK tech success story.”
OnlyFans is based in the UK where it pays corporation tax but its largest market is the US. It was founded in 2016 by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely and his father Guy but was sold in 2018 to Radvinsky, who was already an owner of adult sites.
In an interview with the Financial Times this year, Blair said: “Content creators have the freedom to create the content that they want to. We’ve got lots who don’t produce any adult content, lots who only produce adult content, and then there are some people who are in the middle.”
