Hungarian tennis pro Panna Udvardy has been on OnlyFans since March, and she says the page has given her something prize money rarely does: a steady paycheck. According to The New Indian Express‘s Chandra Prabhu, the world No. 86 talked about her creator side on the sidelines of this week’s WTA Chennai Open, right after a doubles win with Isabelle Haverlag.

“Peace of mind” in an expensive sport

Udvardy pointed to the money problem most players outside the top tier deal with. “Tennis is a sport where you only earn if you win,” she said, explaining that even winning a smaller tournament can leave a player paying more for coaches, travel and hotels than they take home.

That’s where the subscription income comes in. “For me, it is just the peace of mind that I know that for this month I don’t have to worry about paying for my coach or not being able to go to a further tournament,” she told the paper. “I can fall out of the top 100, I can get injured any minute. It’s good to have that regular income.”

The reminder of how fast results can turn came the day before. According to The Times of India‘s Jedidah Joshem, American Robin Montgomery knocked out the fourth-seeded Udvardy 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 in the first round of singles in Chennai.

A tennis page, not what people assume

Udvardy knows what OnlyFans is best known for, and she says her page isn’t that. “If anyone goes on my page, they can see that it’s about my tennis life and the small things that people don’t know from the outside,” she said. She told Prabhu the platform is trying to change how it’s seen, and that by her count it has signed around 500 players over the last four years.

She explained the setup in more detail in a June interview with Hungarian daily Népszava‘s Petra Mihályi. She said she’s an OnlyFans ambassador and gets paid to post free content on a contract schedule. On top of that, she puts more exclusive material behind a paywall, like breakdowns of her conditioning program and talks with her coach about what went right or wrong in a match. Fans also pay to message her, and she said OnlyFans keeps roughly 20% of what she earns.

She also told Népszava that the audience there is more engaged than on Instagram, where posts that don’t fit the trends get buried by the algorithm. One fan, she said, even bought the racket she used in a final in Bogotá.

Curiosity from the locker room

Udvardy admitted some people judged her when she launched, but she says the reaction from other players has mostly been curiosity. “I didn’t really receive any negative comments about it. Everyone’s just interested to know how it works,” she said, adding that a lot of fellow players have asked her about it.

She didn’t share income numbers, but she was clear that it isn’t passive money. “It is a lot of work. You’re constantly in contact with your fans, you have to reply to messages,” she said.

The takeaway

Udvardy’s case is a clean example of why OnlyFans keeps signing athletes. For a player ranked in the 80s, one bad week can wipe out a month of earnings. A subscription page built on training footage, match breakdowns and paid DMs turns a loyal fan base into predictable income. That only works if she keeps showing up for subscribers, which, as she put it, is a job of its own.

Featured image: “Tennis ball on tennis court” by Santeri Viinamäki, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.