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OnlyFans, a website that’s been called the future of sex work, could soon be sold to L.A. investment firm Forest Road Company, according to a report in Reuters, at a valuation of $8 billion.
The company, which sells subscriptions enabling parasocial online relationships with celebrities and sex workers, is currently owned by London tech company Fenix International, the sole proprietorship of American internet entrepreneur Leonid Radvinsky, who bought OnlyFans in 2019. Since 2022, he has paid himself $1 billion in dividends. The company has 40 employees.
Earlier this week, the New York Post reported that Radvinsky was having difficulty finding a buyer because of OnlyFans’ association with porn—which can lead to problems with payment processors, like when Visa (V-0.28%) and Mastercard (MA+0.14%) cut themselves off from Pornhub in 2020. Pension plans and other investors often don’t want to be associated with adult content. There’s also the high risk of such sites hosting non-consensual porn, content made by human traffickers, and child sex abuse, as outlined in a 2024 Reuters series.
Apple (AAPL-0.39%) and Google’s (GOOGL-1.57%) app stores won’t carry OnlyFans, which exists only as a website. That hasn’t stopped its runaway success.
Forest Road and OnlyFans did not comment to Reuters, which reported that Fenix is also entertaining other suitors, as well as the idea of an IPO.
OnlyFans was founded in Britain in 2016 and exploded in popularity during Covid lockdowns. It’s a platform for creators to sell tiered subscriptions offering various levels of access, including pictures and videos. The company takes 20% of earnings; creators keep the rest. In 2023, it brought in $6.6 billion in revenue. That’s up considerably from $375 million just five years ago, in 2020, when it became mainstream.
The company says it has 300 million subscribers following four million creators. Not all of them are sex workers. Shortly after OnlyFans banned and then reinstated porn in the space of one week in 2021, the company recruited fitness coaches, makeup artists, wellness practitioners, and others in an attempt to broaden its base and make it more respectable. Two teachers in Missouri were caught using it to supplement their income in 2023; one of them resigned. During the 2024 Summer Olympics, some athletes started signing up for the site, and in doing so highlighted the underfunding of amateur sports.
Celebrities on the site include singer Lily Allen, who posts pictures of her feet; she says she makes more money from that than she does from music streaming. Sopranos star Drea DeMatteo is also a user, as was, briefly, rapper Cardi B.
Forest Road began as an investment firm focusing on tax credits for independent film; its Vertical Entertainment division has had recent critical hits including Emily the Criminal, starring Aubrey Plaza, and Lee, starring Kate Winslet. In 2020, it branched into renewable energy.
“We are not your average investment firm,” reads the large text on the homepage of Forest Road Company. “We embrace complexity and creativity to extract value where others see limitations.”