Women Pro Athletes Are Joining OnlyFans — but It’s Not All Spicy Business

Sabrina Stanley is one of the best trail runners in the world. She’s won iconic ultramarathon races like the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run and set multiple records for the fastest known time on trails like Shriner Peak in Mount Rainier National Park. But the most lucrative move she’s made in her career so far might be joining OnlyFans.

In March, Stanley became the platform’s first sponsored runner. The contract is similar to traditional sponsorships with sports brands like adidas or Brooks. However, as a subscription-based social media platform where creators can monetize their content, OnlyFans also gives her an opportunity to earn additional income from followers who pay to see her posts or offer a “tip” to send her direct messages.

“It’s gone better than I’d dreamed it would to the point where I’m like, ‘I should just quit trail running and focus on creating for OnlyFans,'” Stanley jokes in an interview with PS. Within three weeks of joining, she had already made enough money to pay off her car. Now, she’s started thinking that, eventually, she might be able to save up enough to buy a house. “Previously with a sponsor, as a single female, one income, that wasn’t on the table for me,” she says.

“This is my athletic body — I’ve trained really hard, so this is what it looks like. If a man can run topless and it’s not a big deal, then a woman should be able to.”

Of course, OnlyFans is mostly known for its sexually-explicit user-generated content. But there are also plenty of G-rated creators sharing everything from makeup tutorials to step-by-step recipes. Stanley is just one of several athletes to recently partner with the platform, which is actively working to expand its sponsorships of motorcycle racers, UFC fighters, downhill mountain bikers, and other boundary-pushing competitors.

Some of these athlete’s feeds are purely family-friendly fare: behind-the-scenes clips, training tips, and selfies. Others embrace the platform’s lack of rules against nudity. Stanley, for one, offers followers a peek inside her professional life for free, but also posts topless shots of herself running in the mountains behind a paywall. Not only does this bring in extra income, but, as someone who’s not shy about her body, she sees it as another way to showcase her athleticism. “This is my athletic body — I’ve trained really hard, so this is what it looks like,” she says. “If a man can run topless and it’s not a big deal, then a woman should be able to.” So far, she says the messages she’s gotten on the site are evenly split between training questions and appreciation for her au naturel photos.

Even if athletes don’t lean into the adult possibilities of the platform, OnlyFans can be a strategic way for them to have more agency over their personal brands. “Unless you have the ability to be in the NFL or the NBA, content is king in athletics right now,” says cliff diver Ellie Smart, who also joined OnlyFans earlier this year. There are only so many cliff diving competitions per year, so a major part of how Smart makes money is by filming videos of her jumps. On other platforms, she’d have to rely on going viral with clickbait-y clips — which bigger sites would often embed and profit off themselves without her seeing a dime. OnlyFans offers her a venue to make sure she actually gets paid for her content.

Smart also appreciates having a platform where users have to be at least 18 years old to open an account, and her stuff doesn’t get flagged as “dangerous acts.” “I don’t do what is known as traditional ‘adult content,’ but I would categorize what I do as a professional cliff diver as adult content,” she says, explaining that, “I don’t want to teach little kids to go jump off a cliff.”

Still, there’s no denying that there’s a stigma to being sponsored by a site that’s primarily known for its spicier content — particularly when you’re a woman. Even though Smart isn’t posting anything NSFW, several of her Instagram followers criticized her sponsorship announcement solely based on OnlyFans’ reputation. Meanwhile, she says the male athletes she knows on the platform haven’t gotten that same kind of pushback.

“If there’s a male who’s nude, I don’t think that people view him as less of an athlete, as less of a person,” Stanley adds. She hasn’t always been given the same leeway. Even as a very confident person who doesn’t buy into the “culture of purity,” as she puts it, Stanley admits that she hesitated for a couple of years. She consulted her agent, her mom, her partner at the time, plus other athletes before joining the platform. She also waited until after parting ways with her previous sponsor out of fear of rocking the boat.

At the same time, the financial possibilities of OnlyFans may be even more consequential for the women who decide to join. “It goes without saying females don’t make as much money in athletics,” Smart says. That’s something of an understatement: One recent report from RBC Wealth Management found that professional male athletes earn an average of 21 times (!) more than their female counterparts. Many women in sports rely on additional streams of income to make ends meet. Smart shares that at one point, she was working three jobs to afford her training. Now, with her sponsorship from OnlyFans (in addition to ones from Red Bull and Insta360), she sees herself being able to compete for far longer than she would have otherwise. “OnlyFans has given me the opportunity to focus more on my diving and actually pursue what I want to accomplish in the sport,” she says.

For her, that’s what’s most important. “If it allows you to keep living the life that you want to live and pursuing your dreams, then who cares if a couple people have something to say?” Smart says.

Jennifer Heimlich is a writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience in fitness and wellness journalism. She previously worked as the senior fitness editor for Well+Good and the editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine. A UESCA-certified running coach, she’s written about running and fitness for publications like Shape, GQ, Runner’s World, and The Atlantic.