The athlete on the different finish of a surreal telephone name is discussing his hope to paddle a canoe for Crew GB on the Olympics. However he’s additionally chatting in regards to the different approach he spends his time – the one which left him rich and suspended from his sport.
His title is Kurts Adams Rozentals and, as he tells me, you possibly can ask him something about his work, life and experiences as a creator of grownup content material for OnlyFans, an internet site greatest recognized for pornography. He’s an open guide, in previous cash.
However there are traces he gained’t cross along with his subscribers.
‘I went into it at first of the 12 months considering I used to be going to do customized requests, however they simply bought so bizarre,’ he says. ‘There was this one request and I am simply going to say it concerned gummy bears. I used to be like, “Guys, I am not doing that”.
‘There are sickos on this world, brother.’
He laughed at that and so did I – Rozentals is an amusing raconteur, a 22-year-old who was the world Below 23 silver medallist within the canoe slalom in 2023 and persona non grata on most of the identical waterways in 2025.
Kurts Adams Rozentals is a top-level canoeist nonetheless dreaming of competing for Crew GB on the Olympics…
…and he is additionally one of many quickly rising variety of sporting stars flocking to OnlyFans, a web site greatest recognized for its grownup content material
We’re speaking as a result of jolting pattern lately of sportsmen and girls flooding in huge numbers to OnlyFans.
Rozentals’s instance sits at one excessive of the spectrum – he doesn’t see himself as a intercourse employee however he does commerce in intercourse. It’s sophisticated. Nevertheless it has additionally earned him six-figure takings in eight months and as we speak he’s arguably probably the most well-known canoeist since Lewis and Clark. A pariah to those that run his sport? That too.
On the different finish of the dimensions are these just like the cricketer Tymal Mills, who was a part of the England squad that gained the 2022 T20 World Cup and final week hitched himself to the platform.
Previous to Mills there was Nick Kyrgios, a number of names from observe and discipline, former England rugby captain Chris Robshaw, the previous Bayern Munich footballer Douglas Costa, quite a lot of Crew GB divers and greater than 200 fighters from fight sports activities.
Eyebrows increase every time there’s a new recruit, however not all of them conform to expectations. Mills, for example, is promoting tutorials on quick bowling, with evaluation of his performances in The Hundred obtainable to any of OnlyFans’ 400 million customers for £3.70 a go. Regardless of the banter from his team-mates at Southern Courageous, his content material is solely family-friendly. As he joked to me, it must be, as a result of his spouse is aware of what he’s as much as.
Collectively they’re a part of a curious, awkward and uncomfortable phenomenon that Every day Mail Sport has explored.
Now we have visited the web site and spoken to a number of athletes utilizing it to achieve an understanding of two key questions: why is it taking place? And what circumstances have led so many from the world of sport to connect their private manufacturers to a platform with a distinctly seedy repute? The latter counts particularly for individuals who aren’t peddling the location’s best-known product.
Rozentals? What he does is nearer to pornography and he has no inhibition in terms of discussing it.
Rozentals had turned to taking shifts in an Amazon warehouse as his Lottery funding was not sufficient – then he discovered OnlyFans
Rozentals made £2,500 in his first day alone on the seedy web site – and doesn’t have any regrets about his selection
We gained’t labour the descriptions of what he gives for an preliminary subscription of £6.30 per 30 days, but it surely begins with nude photographs on his important feed and escalates for individuals who then pay extra for personal messages, the place he says the intense cash is to be made. His reduce of revenues, like all content material creators on the location, is 80 per cent.
Such a enterprise mannequin has led OnlyFans to a worth estimated at £6billion, making it larger than Manchester United, in a way of talking.
For Rozentals, it has left him ostracised from his day job – Paddle UK, the governing physique on this nation, suspended him in April over what he was posting.
That was a sporting setback for him and likewise a second from which he has benefited enormously in monetary phrases. Certainly, he reveals to Every day Mail Sport that after giving an interview to the BBC in Might, protesting his exclusion, the publicity made him £100,000 within the subsequent 4 weeks.
‘I don’t remorse it,’ says Rozentals. ‘I grew up with nothing and on my very first day on OnlyFans I made £2,500. At that time, it was round double my month-to-month wage from Paddle UK (the place his annual lottery funding through their World Class Programme amounted to £16,000). Dwelling on what I used to be dwelling as an expert athlete was very laborious.’
Struggling to make ends meet throughout the Olympic sector is nothing new – underneath the British system, which stays the envy of countries all over the world, lottery funding sometimes peaks at £28,000.
It has paved the best way to unprecedented success for Crew GB on the Video games because it was launched in 1997, however gold medals not often make you wealthy. For a lot of, the sacrifice is value it; for others, and notably these with little or no backing, the price of making an attempt necessitates additional income streams.
Predictably, or depressingly, relying in your perspective, a platform with potential to generate astonishing sums for much less effort than an ordinary part-time job has confirmed interesting. The Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman joined in 2021 and part-funded her Olympic bronze medal in Paris final 12 months by means of subscriptions that price round £9 a month.
Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman is one other who turned to OnlyFans
Newman, 31, gives suggestive imagery at no cost on her OnlyFans web page, earlier than escalating when members pay a charge
In Newman’s case, as with many accounts, what begins with suggestive imagery at no cost on her web page escalates to personal messages providing extra specific photographs for £50 or extra. She was reported in the summertime of 2024 to have earned greater than £170,000 from this enterprise.
Naturally, it’s down to every athlete to determine if the stigma is value it. Simply as it’s all the way down to everybody else to determine in the event that they really feel outraged or detached.
For his or her half, senior British Olympic Affiliation sources have beforehand instructed me they have been ‘relaxed’ in regards to the variety of Crew GB athletes utilizing the platform forward of the Paris Olympics. Crucially, none of these circumstances are recognized to have veered past suggestive materials.
They included the gold medal-winning diver Jack Laugher and Tom Daley’s synchro accomplice Noah Williams. Laugher, for one, nonetheless carries a observe on his profile that states there will probably be no ‘full frontal nudity’ on his web page. Rozentals makes no such promise.
Like him, Elise Christie posts content material that’s sexual in its nature, albeit as a retired athlete.
She gained 30 main medals as a short-track pace skater, together with three world titles, however her difficulties have been well-documented. She had traumatic visits to the Winter Olympics in 2014 and 2018 for Crew GB, earlier than retiring three years in the past and becoming a member of the platform quickly after.
By that stage, she was out of cash, had frolicked dwelling in her automotive, and battled extreme psychological well being issues. Aged 35, she now posts on the location most days, however reviews that her life has stabilised.
‘I used to be in a nasty place once I got here out of the game,’ she tells me. ‘I’m significantly better now and an enormous a part of that was being recognized bipolar and getting remedy. However I used to be in an enormous gap with debt, working three jobs, and couldn’t get out.
Elise Christie, the previous Crew GB pace skater, has additionally turned to OnlyFans to assist her funds post-retirement
Christie has battled extreme psychological well being issues however is in a greater place now and posts on OnlyFans nearly day by day
Christie is seen in her Crew GB package in a submit selling her OnlyFans web page
‘Folks in all probability nonetheless don’t understand how many people come out of sport with nothing, even in case you had good careers.’
Christie says she acquired ‘merciless feedback’ when she finally pivoted to OnlyFans in 2022, however is now comfy with the choice.
‘With OnlyFans, I’d must say it has helped decide me up out of a darkish place,’ she provides. ‘I couldn’t have executed it once I was nonetheless competing, and look, the stigma is there. It was an enormous concern for me.
‘However I do suppose society is altering as effectively round this. Do you keep in mind when Large Brother got here out and there have been sure issues on the display screen that shocked us? Now you may have Love Island and it goes far past what we noticed again then.
‘Folks use OnlyFans in numerous methods. I’ve made selections, clearly, and I’m getting myself again collectively. If I used to be financially secure I wouldn’t have gone on it, and that isn’t a judgement in opposition to anybody else, however I wanted to do one thing to get a step up. Many people do.’
It tallies with Rozentals’s expertise. He tells me: ‘If individuals dig deeper into why I did it, they’d perceive that firstly, this was not my first port of name.’
His work included freelance video enhancing and shifts in an Amazon warehouse, however all of it left him near broke and too exhausted for coaching. His eventual resolution was to make use of the physique he constructed for money; Christie did the identical.
‘The best way I checked out it, is that I labored for this physique and I’m type of proudly owning that,’ she says.
Crew GB Olympic gold medallist Jack Laugher has additionally joined the location – however guarantees ‘no full frontal nudity’
And Laugher’s Crew GB diving team-mate Noah Williams, who gained a silver and bronze on the Paris Olympics final 12 months, has additionally opened a web page
Rozentals has not given up hope of competing on the Olympics – a prospect that may effectively make some observers cringe if it involves go. What he says subsequent goes to the crux of the controversy: ‘I might be mendacity if I stated earlier than I began that I wasn’t anticipating some backlash however I used to be shocked by how strict Paddle UK have been with their response. I consider it is resulting from outdated considering.
‘They nonetheless suppose we dwell within the instances of athletes having an ideal public picture and God forbid they do one thing that does not align with our proposed morals.’
As for different athletes who’re buying and selling in materials that’s unrelated to intercourse, an fascinating dynamic is at play – athletes are utilizing OnlyFans, however OnlyFans are additionally utilizing athletes.
In Mills’s case, and certainly Kyrgios and the bulk, they’ve been signed as ‘companions’ for a charge, selling sports-based materials that may be monetised.
It’s clear OnlyFans are concentrating on the massive, personalised fanbases of athletes for his or her enterprise, but it surely does increase the query of why select a web site with a repute that may reduce his personal.
Because of the structure of the location, visiting Mills’s web page wouldn’t put a person in touch with any pornography until they occur to subscribe to accounts providing it. What meaning is in case you occur to decide on OnlyFans as the precise place for studying the right way to bowl line and size, you in all probability can with out offending sensibilities. Nonetheless, it’s a curious combine.
He provides: ‘I suppose the very first thing that involves thoughts (with OnlyFans) is clearly the grownup content material. And I perceive that. However they’re an enormous firm and when you raise the lid, you do see what number of genres are on there – cooks, cooks and comedians from all walks of life.
‘As soon as I began to study extra in regards to the platform itself and what you are able to do on it, it grew to become fairly apparent that it is form of ready-made for athletes, with how one can type your personal content material and your personal platform.’
England cricketer Tymal Mills has a web page… however solely to provide his viewers recommendations on the right way to enhance their bowling
Rozentals competes in Olympics trials again in April 2019, lengthy earlier than his enterprise into OnlyFans
Whether or not that degree of inventive management actually means greater than an honest signing charge is susceptible to scepticism. Intriguingly, Mills says the corporate has deliberate on including top-level footballers to their cohort.
For Mills, the response to signing up was predictable. ‘It’s the stuff you’d anticipate,’ he says. ‘It’s like, “Are you going to be bowling bare on movies” or no matter. I clearly will not try this – I do not suppose my spouse would approve for one.’
Mills’s expertise to date has highlighted the problem an celebration would possibly face, with the England and Wales Cricket Board having rejected his request to hold the OnlyFans emblem on his bat. It has been reported that they denied approval on the grounds that the corporate doesn’t align with the family-friendly nature of The Hundred.
Very similar to the canoeist caught up the creek with out a paddle, it’s an illustration of the uneasiness that exists inside a rising sample. Rozentals’s take is straightforward: ‘Don’t hate the participant, hate the sport.’ Many would possibly discover it more durable to digest how the sport has modified.
