Game of Porn: The Battle to Topple OnlyFans

The sign blocking access is clear: “The pool is closed for a private event.”

Look past the sign and you, a curious civilian — that is, someone who is not part of the adult industry — trying to get a peek inside the well-guarded Miami Beach hotel, would see some of the most desired bodies online on OnlyFans and other top premium fan platforms, here very much IRL taking selfie videos, arranging content collabs (both NSFW and SFW “for the ’gram”), sharing marketing tips, catching up with industry news, and generally cavorting and schmoozing under an enormous magenta and cyan sign spelling out the name of the event organizer, the adult trade publisher XBIZ.

Against this very much peak May 2026 backdrop, however, a corporate drama is playing out, one the people in this pool understand better than many of the mainstream media analysts covering it.

Leo Radvinsky — the adult industry visionary who took OnlyFans from just one among many fan platforms to pretty much total porn-world supremacy, gaining a seat at the table of bona fide billionaires in the process — died in March at 43 after a battle with cancer. His widow, Katie Chudnovsky, a lawyer and venture investor with no visible prior profile in the adult industry, now controls the multi­billion-dollar business through the family trust her husband structured before his death. She recently approved the sale of 16 percent of OnlyFans’ parent company, Fenix International Ltd., to San Francisco-based Architect Capital, a financial firm that specializes in lending to tech companies.

The deal reportedly closed at $535 million, giving the creator fan monetization behemoth a staggering $3.15 billion valuation, and was announced to the mainstream financial press on May 8, less than seven weeks after Radvinsky’s death.

And “OF” (also euphemistically known as “the blue site,” to sidestep Instagram censorship) has also become, in the process, an unstoppable household name, enshrined in the culture as a major plot point — and sign of the times — in two prestige TV shows. Both Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) on Euphoria and Margo (Elle Fanning) on Margo’s Got Money Troubles were the poster pinups for an estimated 1 million to 1.4 million American creators, most of them in the 18-24 demographic (at least according to the math of right-wing press reports trying to sensationalize the issue), who sell content on the platform.

OnlyFans — as pretty much everyone but the company’s beleaguered marketing reps acknowledges — built its empire on the backs (and the fronts, and the feet, etc.) of adult creators. But it’s also been a widespread perception in the adult business that the company has been ambivalent about those creators for years, and its competitors — particularly Texas-based upstart Fansly — suddenly see an opportunity.

Now, amid the machinations that invariably follow a billionaire’s passing, the company once again faces the question its own success made unavoidable: Keep the explicit content that built its empire — and stay private, profitable and perpetually stigmatized — or sanitize OF in pursuit of the mainstream investors and eventual IPO that the porn will always hinder.

OnlyFans fumbled a previous version of this dilemma. Back in the summer of 2021, after user and creator numbers skyrocketed as everyone was cooped up during the pandemic, the company warned creators that it was going to ban all adult explicit sex content beyond simple nudes starting in the fall. A few days later, after enormous pushback from the sex worker community, the company walked back the announcement.

The fallout from what adult creators still remember as The Great “OnlyFans Is Gonna Get Rid of Us” Panic of 2021 has had a long tail. Five years later, it’s safe to assume that a majority of those mingling in microbikinis and other colorful, iPhone-camera-ready getups around the XBIZ Miami pool still make most of their income on OnlyFans.

“I know this would be the perfect time to own my own website, but my main thing at the moment is, still, OnlyFans,” says the immensely popular adult creator, performer and cosplayer Violet Myers. “I don’t want to oversaturate my fans with joining multiple platforms, so I like for them to just be subscribed to one. But yes, I’ve had people approach me with special deals to join their platforms and bring my subscribers along.”

Kenzie Anne, another top-tier creator who had a brief but stellar foray into mainstream porn, concurs that OF has still been her main premium social platform, although her earnings there have been recently eclipsed by what she has been making on SextPanther, a chat and video call platform that is quietly touted as another major moneymaker for adult professionals.

“SextPanther is more like your modern-day 1-800 sex hotline, where in the ’90s people would call and there’d be some horny, hot girl’s voice on the other end,” Anne explains. “So that’s what SextPanther is, except there’s video calls too. So you turn your calls on and anyone who has an account can call you when your calls are on. You pick up the phone and you are paid per minute, like a taxi.”

These creators are savvy online marketers who can dizzy a layperson with complex discussions of ROI, content stream diversification and fan-intake funnels. They are also, collectively, the most coveted sales force in the adult business, each one a direct line to the wallets of hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of proven paying fans.

The OnlyFans banner is notably absent from the multitude of sponsored cabanas at the event, and has been for years. The corporate drama playing out in London boardrooms and San Francisco investment offices is, to the creators who actually built OnlyFans into a $3 billion business, largely beside the point. Many of them have already laid out their strategy long ago.

Which is why OF’s competitors have turned XBIZ Miami into a B2B marketplace, securing cabanas and poolside signage to make their pitch to the people the market leader has spent years taking for granted. The cabanas here belong to SextPanther (and its porn-star exclusive subsidiary, Mynx), Streamate, Chaturbate and Brazzers, the latter arriving not in its capacity as a legacy pay site but to pitch a new creator-focused agency. An army of reps approach creators around the pool, touting their differentiating factors: an FYP (For You Page) discoverability algorithm, which OnlyFans notoriously lacks; ranking boards that gamify the battle for fan attention, better technical support; or just the basic assurance that, as one of the company reps coyly puts it, “unlike others, we embrace and are not ashamed of sex workers and porn creators.”

One lap around the crowd of creators being courted at XBIZ Miami dispels the myth of the hegemonically hot “OF girlie” as represented by Sweeney on Euphoria. This is not Dubai-Miami. The event features a striking diversity of body shapes, ages, complexions, backgrounds, orientations, gender expressions and body art, all made equal under the Florida sun (slightly overcast this year) by their status as golden geese for the fan platforms.

As for the “What would you do if/when OnlyFans gets rid of porn?” question, most of these creators have already done the math, years ago — and, more importantly, they’ve acted on it. They’ve been quietly laying the groundwork to leave since 2021.

For many of them, the answer is, “I’ll switch to Fansly.” Fansly was started in 2020 by a team that cut its teeth in the gaming world and found itself in the right place at the right time during The Great Panic of 2021. So many OF creators, some of them top-level, announced they were going to Fansly during that period of uncertainty that a Twitter conspiracy developed theorizing that Fansly was actually an OnlyFans shell company and OnlyFans’ genius plan was to dump all the porn reprobates there while claiming its flagship was now squeaky clean (this is not true).

Comparing the two businesses is not easy. OnlyFans is incorporated in the U.K. through Fenix International Ltd., which means it is legally required to file annual financial accounts, and those filings are public record. Fansly, on the other hand, operates under a privately held American company with no equivalent disclosure requirement. We are not talking apples and oranges, more like a vast planet versus a rapidly growing asteroid that sits inside a black box of uncertain size.

Fansly has a welcoming cabana, complete with swag like fans, pool floaties and free brand-color-themed popsicles, at XBIZ Miami. They are also the trade show’s main sponsor. This year, they’re going all out trying to convince creators that they should list Fansly (the implication: and not OF) as their first platform on their Linktree lists.

Fansly has been the main beneficiary of OnlyFans’ institutional ambivalence, and has made what marketing director Leah Koons calls a “very loudly sex work-first” positioning into a key competitive advantage in its play to dethrone the sector king.

Koons is attending XBIZ Miami and also helping arrange interviews with creators who have made the most of their alignment with Fansly.

MyCookieJar is the username and brand of an eloquent “independent adult content creator” (in her self-description) in a tiger-print bikini who bears more than a facial resemblance to Scarlett Johansson and is thrilled to share the advantages of being “Fansly-first.” MyCookieJar and her husband and content partner, Real Cookie Daddy — who are at the show promoting their upcoming website, sheCRUMBLED.com — were part of the cohort that started selling subscriptions and videos on OF during the pandemic, only to be sideswiped by The Great Panic. Hearing that Fansly was the place to go, they headed over and were shocked at how responsive the platform’s team was to their feedback.

“I remember we messaged them and said, ‘Hey, I would really like the ability to just upload directly to the vault,’ ” MyCookieJar tells THR. “Within a day, they pushed that feature live. And I was like, this is a company that loves its creators!”

That sense of loyalty became a feedback loop. “When OF did that, a lot of people chose Fansly, and I feel like Fansly heard that, and they said, ‘You chose us, so we will kill for you,’ ” says MyCookieJar. For the couple, the technical features that allowed them to grow their brands were also a key factor in their decision to rank Fansly over OF as their top choice, although they still maintain a presence on “the blue site.” (One of the lessons you hear at XBIZ Miami seminars: “Don’t ever leave money on the table.”)

“If you don’t have big socials, you can’t be successful on OnlyFans,” Real Cookie Daddy notes. “It’s very hierarchical — it keeps it small. It doesn’t give new creators the ability to really climb.”

Nearby, another militantly Fansly-first creator couple, the Nakedbakers (Alli and Austin), are making sure their adorable puppy in a baby stroller is kept in the shade of the booth. The Nakedbakers’ flagship outlet is a popular weekly cooking show (in the nude) starring Alli and assorted collab partners and streaming weekly, but they also have a robust video-selling operation.

Realizing that OnlyFans kept deleting and demonetizing niche content for seemingly arbitrary “compliance” reasons, the Nakedbakers checked with Fansly, who were eager to figure a way to host their fetish content.

“OnlyFans had already pulled our public flashing content, which had been OK before,” Austin reminisces. “So I got in touch with Fansly and was like, ‘I need a legally worded response that guarantees it will always be allowed on your platform, or I’m not wasting my time. We hand-shook the deal, and I started the page, and that’s how we got going. And then immediately, having a background in tech, I was like, ‘Oh, wait a second, this is actually really, really good tech — this is arguably better than OnlyFans!’ ”

Overhearing the interview, Ellie James,

a tall creator and dietitian with a traffic-stopping model body in a hot pink bikini, eagerly volunteers her endorsement.

“The real reason that I like Fansly is because they’re for the creators,” James says. “If I reach out to them with a question, need help or have a suggestion, they actually care. So I’d rather support a company that does that than one that doesn’t really care too much.”

Contacted for comment about the perception that they have been less responsive to creators’ concerns than their competitors, OnlyFans’ chief policy and communications officer, Sue Beeby, referred The Hollywood Reporter to the press release issued by the company to announce the Architect Capital deal, where company CEO Keily Blair stated, “Our mission has always been to empower creators and fans by providing a unique set of tools to create, monetize, and engage with content online. This strategic investment reflects our success in delivering this mission, and will enable us to build additional services and features to support our creator community and enhance OnlyFans’ position in the creator economy.”

The May 8 press release also describes the platform as being “home to a wide range of content creators including comedians, athletes, fashion designers, music artists, celebrities and adult content creators” and celebrates that the Architect Capital deal will allow it to grow its offerings to content creators “who are often underserved by traditional financial institutions and products.” Tellingly, adult creators — the category for which OnlyFans is best known — appears last on the company’s list.

Back at XBIZ Miami, the creators mingling at the Fansly booth sounded genuinely enthusiastic about cosigning the upstart platform. That’s a competitive differentiator no press release can match: Unlike OF, which sometimes acts as if their sex creators exist behind a beaded curtain at the back of their virtual store, Fansly is perceived as a platform that listens.

“The trust of creators has been broken by platforms time and time and time again,” Koons explains. “We were there in 2021 and we were prepared for it. And we stay ready. Anything can happen at any time, and our site is ready to handle it.”

Fansly may be the most talked-about among creators, but it’s by no means in an uncontested position as the main OnlyFans alternative. There’s LoyalFans (currently owned by gigantic, Budapest-centered adult industry conglomerate Byborg Enterprises, which also controls the camming platform LiveJasmin and part of the storied Playboy brand), JustFor.Fans (highlighting gay men content), DarkFans (for hard-core BDSM), new startup Hidden, as well as less ballyhooed fan platform features within top webcamming platforms like CAM4. Ever since the pandemic boom, the market has matured and creators have real options. There’s riches in niches, as they’ve been saying for years at XBIZ panels.

A more comprehensive, bird’s-eye view on the creators’ “Where do we go” dilemma can be provided by Cherie DeVille, a 16-year veteran of the industry who’s also, it turns out, one of America’s Top MILFs, as well as a sharp writer and activist with bylines in several major publications.

DeVille has watched this cycle repeat. Her partner is a musician, and she sees the parallels between those two strands of the entertainment industries: There used to be lucrative record contracts, then that dried up and touring became the main thing, then Spotify showed up, and now they’ve had to diversify with merch. For DeVille, what creators sell is sex and, sometimes, the experience of intimacy. Where they sell, however, is strictly a business decision, and the fan base is the only asset that actually belongs to them.

“There’s only one consistent thing in adult and that’s that it’s totally inconsistent,” DeVille reflects. “In this business, you never, ever, ever, not even for one month, put all of your eggs in one basket.”

Lexi Luna, another MILF porn performer and prolific indie creator who’s consistently been among OnlyFans’ highest-earning name-brand stars, says she is partial to LoyalFans. She agrees with DeVille that the real assets are the fans and that the trust has to be built over time.

“My fans will go wherever I tell them to, because they trust that I’m taking care of them and I’m not sending them somewhere that’s a scam,” Luna notes.

Derek Kage, a top OF male performer, creator and business school graduate who has recently diversified his income through rival platforms, puts it more bluntly: “In the adult industry, we’re used to this kind of stigma, so we understand,” he says, “but the platforms have to understand that without us, they don’t even have a business.”

DeVille thinks that as long as her colleagues know how to market, what marketplace you’re using to sell your wares is somewhat irrelevant. Although she makes 75 percent of her income on OnlyFans, she stresses she would not be devastated if she had to shift her marketing effort elsewhere, because she’s watched Snapchat, studio work, personal websites and a dozen other revenue streams ebb and flow.

Back by the XBIZ Miami pool, the sun is setting and everyone is trying to figure out where the action is. There are several options during the three days of XBIZ Miami, from a White Party at the Myst club in Miami Beach, to a more exclusive, invitation-only party thrown by Brazzers, to the glitzy XMAs Miami awards gala thrown by XBIZ to honor excellence in the field.

As everyone is trading in bikinis for nighttime attire (OK, for many it still pretty much looks like a bikini), thoughts of a new OnlyFans porn ban, or the changing of the guard at the top, or the financially complex Architect Capital deal recede. Things should be OK for their livelihoods, barring a sudden rollback of free speech protections at the federal level.

“I know, like every other platform and job that I’ve ever had in sex work, it comes and goes,” DeVille concludes. “It’ll be the good old days of OnlyFans, and we’ll all have moved on.”

This story appeared in the June 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.