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The owner of OnlyFans, the subscription platform used by millions for its adult content, is in talks to sell the UK-based business for $8bn (£5.9bn).
The site’s owner, Fenix International, is in discussions with a consortium led by the US investment firm Forest Road Company (FRC), whose board members include Kevin Mayer, who was an executive at Disney for nearly 15 years and also briefly ran TikTok.
Fenix is owned by Leonid Radvinsky, a 43-year-old Ukrainian-American entrepreneur, who has received dividends of just under $1.3bn from the highly profitable site since 2020.
OnlyFans has more than 4m accounts registered to creators who charge subscribers for access to their content, with the proceeds split 80/20 with the platform. The site has 305m fan accounts, enabling users to buy videos from, and send messages to, their favourite performers.
Although OnlyFans points to a breadth of content that includes comedy, lifestyle and celebrity material, it is synonymous with pornography and has a strict 18+ age limit.
In its most recent accounts, OnlyFans posted revenues of $1.3bn in the year to 30 November 2023, an increase of 20% on the previous year, while its pre-tax profit rose by a quarter to $658m.
The number of creator accounts and fan accounts each grew by nearly 30% and content creators received $6.6bn in 2023.
At the time, Keily Blair, the chief executive of OnlyFans, said the company had cemented its place as a “leading digital entertainment company and a UK tech success story”.
OnlyFans declined to comment and FRC has been contacted for comment.
Fenix is also in talks with other suitors, according to Reuters, which first revealed the takeover talks. It is also understood that a flotation of the platform is an unlikely option.
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OnlyFans was founded in 2016 by Tim Stokely, backed by a loan from his investment banker father, and Radvinsky bought the company in 2018. Little is known about Odesa-born Radvinsky, although his personal website states that he holds a degree in economics from Northwestern University in the US and he lives in Florida. Before acquiring OnlyFans he owned an adult webcam business.
In March the UK communications regulator fined Fenix £1m for failing to accurately respond to requests for information about age-checking measures on the platform, specifically facial estimation technology that gauges a user’s age via a selfie.
Ofcom said Fenix was a large, well-resourced company that was “well aware of its regulatory obligations” and should have avoided its failings.
