American tennis pro Sachia Vickery has a blunt explanation for why more of her peers keep showing up on OnlyFans. According to Where Is The Buzz‘s Emily Clark, Vickery answered a fan question in an Instagram story and said players are “tired of being financially abused by the tennis circuit and want to live a good life.”

She followed it with a laughing emoji, but the point was serious. “People have families and bills to take care of; at some point, they’re gonna look into other avenues of income,” she wrote, per the report.

The question that set it off

Vickery had opened up her stories with a casual “Been a while, ask me the tea.” One follower asked why more tennis players seemed to be joining OnlyFans since she started. Her reply put the blame on the economics of the sport, not on the players. She also addressed how she runs her own page: “I take my OF to the next level, but that’s a personal choice to maximize my account,” she said, according to Where Is The Buzz.

Vickery, 31, reached a career-high singles ranking of 73rd in 2018 and now sits outside the top 600, the outlet reported. Her page costs $12.99 a month.

Why $2 million doesn’t go far in tennis

Vickery has been making this argument for more than a year. According to CNN‘s Don Riddell, she started posting on OnlyFans in 2025 while a shoulder injury kept her off the tour for six months. Her career prize money is listed at around $2 million, but she told CNN that number is misleading. “I can tell you, $2 million is absolutely nothing when it comes to tennis,” she said, adding that she had spent more than $100,000 on coaching, fitness, physio, recovery and MRIs.

She told CNN her link to the platform began when she teamed up with Australian player Nick Kyrgios in March 2025 to make pickleball content for OnlyFans’ TV platform. She said she hit around six figures within her first three months, “probably more than what I made at the slams.” She also called the income “a security blanket” that has helped fund her entire tennis career.

She isn’t alone

Where Is The Buzz listed a growing roster of tennis players with ties to the platform, including Kyrgios, who opened a page in 2023, and Australia’s Arina Rodionova. The outlet also reported, citing earlier coverage in France’s L’Equipe, that French players Alexandre Muller, Chloe Paquet, Oceane Dodin and Jonathan Eysseric signed sponsorship deals with OnlyFans in 2025, and that Spain’s Pedro Martinez has joined too.

The pitch to athletes goes beyond tennis. Around 285 professional athletes were on the platform as of May, an OnlyFans spokesperson told Front Office Sports, according to the report. OnlyFans keeps 20% of what creators earn.

The underlying problem is well known on tour: players ranked outside the top 100 typically pay their own way for travel, coaching, hotels and food, and those costs can outrun the prize money at smaller events.

The takeaway

Vickery’s comment lands because it flips the usual framing. Instead of athletes “turning to” OnlyFans out of desperation, she describes it as a rational business choice in a sport that doesn’t pay most of its working pros enough to cover the job. For creators in any field, the lesson is the same one she keeps repeating: when your main income doesn’t cover your costs, owning a direct line to paying fans is leverage.

Image: AI-generated illustration.