We’re republishing the perfect of DailyMail+ Sport from 2025 – the unique, in-depth tales that our subscribers love. Right here, we take a look at a rising development amongst world-class athletes – and why footballers may very well be subsequent to affix the seedy OnlyFans empire.
The athlete on the different finish of a surreal cellphone name is discussing his hope to paddle a canoe for Staff 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 identify is Kurts Adams Rozentals and, as he tells me, you’ll be able to ask him something about his work, life and experiences as a creator of grownup content material for OnlyFans, an internet site greatest identified for pornography. He’s an open e-book, in outdated cash.
However there are strains he received’t cross together with his subscribers.
‘I went into it in the beginning of the yr considering I used to be going to do customized requests, however they simply obtained 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 Beneath 23 silver medallist within the canoe slalom in 2023 and persona non grata on most of the similar waterways in 2025.
Kurts Adams Rozentals is a top-level canoeist nonetheless dreaming of competing for Staff GB on the Olympics…
…and he is additionally one of many quickly growing variety of sporting stars flocking to OnlyFans, a website greatest identified for its grownup content material
We’re speaking because of the jolting development 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 difficult. However it has additionally earned him six-figure takings in eight months and at present he’s arguably essentially 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 size are these just like the cricketer Tymal Mills, who was a part of the England squad that received 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 monitor and discipline, former England rugby captain Chris Robshaw, the previous Bayern Munich footballer Douglas Costa, a wide range of Staff 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 accessible 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 Day by day Mail Sport has explored.
We now have visited the web site and spoken to a number of athletes utilizing it to realize an understanding of two key questions: why is it occurring? And what circumstances have led so many from the world of sport to connect their private manufacturers to a platform with a distinctly seedy popularity? The latter counts particularly for many who aren’t peddling the positioning’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 website – and doesn’t have any regrets about his alternative
We received’t labour the descriptions of what he affords for an preliminary subscription of £6.30 monthly, however it begins with nude photos on his most important feed and escalates for many 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 positioning, 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 fashion 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 Day by 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 by way of their World Class Programme amounted to £16,000). Residing on what I used to be dwelling as knowledgeable athlete was very laborious.’
Struggling to make ends meet inside the Olympic sector is nothing new – beneath the British system, which stays the envy of countries around the globe, lottery funding usually peaks at £28,000.
It has paved the way in which to unprecedented success for Staff GB on the Video games because it was launched in 1997, however gold medals hardly ever make you wealthy. For a lot of, the sacrifice is value it; for others, and significantly these with little or no backing, the price of attempting necessitates further income streams.
Predictably, or depressingly, relying in your viewpoint, a platform with potential to generate astonishing sums for much less effort than a regular 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 yr by subscriptions that price round £9 a month.
Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman is one other who turned to OnlyFans
Newman, 31, affords suggestive imagery at no cost on her OnlyFans web page, earlier than escalating when members pay a payment
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 express pictures 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 resolve if the stigma is value it. Simply as it’s all the way down to everybody else to resolve 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 Staff GB athletes utilizing the platform forward of the Paris Olympics. Crucially, none of these circumstances are identified 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 notice on his profile that states there might 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 received 30 main medals as a short-track velocity 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 Staff 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 automobile, and battled extreme psychological well being issues. Aged 35, she now posts on the positioning most days, however studies that her life has stabilised.
‘I used to be in a foul place once I got here out of the game,’ she tells me. ‘I’m a lot better now and an enormous a part of that was being identified 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 Staff GB velocity 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 virtually on daily basis
Christie is seen in her Staff GB equipment in a submit selling her OnlyFans web page
‘Folks in all probability nonetheless don’t know the way many people come out of sport with nothing, even in case you had good careers.’
Christie says she acquired ‘merciless feedback’ when she ultimately pivoted to OnlyFans in 2022, however is now snug 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 accomplished 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 nicely round this. Do you bear in mind when Huge Brother got here out and there have been sure issues on the display screen that shocked us? Now you could have Love Island and it goes far past what we noticed again then.
‘Folks use OnlyFans in several 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 folks 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 modifying and shifts in an Amazon warehouse, however all of it left him near broke and too exhausted for coaching. His eventual answer was to make use of the physique he constructed for money; Christie did the identical.
‘The way in which I checked out it, is that I labored for this physique and I’m kind of proudly owning that,’ she says.
Staff GB Olympic gold medallist Jack Laugher has additionally joined the positioning – however guarantees ‘no full frontal nudity’
And Laugher’s Staff GB diving team-mate Noah Williams, who received a silver and bronze on the Paris Olympics final yr, has additionally opened a web page
Rozentals has not given up hope of competing on the Olympics – a prospect which may nicely make some observers cringe if it involves move. What he says subsequent goes to the crux of the controversy: ‘I might be mendacity if I mentioned 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 imagine it is on account of outdated considering.
‘They nonetheless suppose we stay within the occasions 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 attention-grabbing 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 payment, 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, however it does increase the query of why select a website with a popularity which may reduce his personal.
Because of the format of the positioning, visiting Mills’s web page wouldn’t put a person involved with any pornography until they occur to subscribe to accounts providing it. What which means is in case you occur to decide on OnlyFans as the correct place for studying the best 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 be taught extra in regards to the platform itself and what you are able to do on it, it turned fairly apparent that it is form of ready-made for athletes, with how one can kind your personal content material and your personal platform.’
England cricketer Tymal Mills has a web page… however solely to present his viewers recommendations on the best 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 stage of inventive management really means greater than a good signing payment 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 this point has highlighted the problem an celebration would possibly face, with the England and Wales Cricket Board having rejected his request to hold the OnlyFans brand 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 like the canoeist caught up the creek and not using 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 tougher to digest how the sport has modified.
