Beyond UFC and Tennis: The Athletes Quietly Opening OnlyFans Pages
The UFC fighters and tennis players got the headlines. But the athletes joining OnlyFans now span boxing, football, bobsled and Olympic diving — and most are there for the money their sports don't pay.
When a UFC fighter or a tennis player opens an OnlyFans account, it makes the tabloids. What doesn't make the tabloids is how far the trend has spread. Boxers, footballers, rowers, cyclists, bobsledders and Olympic divers have all opened pages, and the platform itself is now actively courting them.
The athlete-on-OnlyFans story is no longer about a few provocative names. It's a broad migration across sports, driven by an unglamorous fact — most athletes don't earn much — and it increasingly has nothing to do with adult content. Here's who's actually joining beyond the obvious names, and why.
The platform is courting them directly
The clearest sign this has gone mainstream is that OnlyFans is officially recruiting athletes. In 2026 the company spotlighted a roster of sports creators on its community pages, including French tennis player Chloe Paquet, Brazilian-American MMA fighter Cris Cyborg, American cliff diver Ellie Smart, and Olympians such as alpine skier Joan Verdú, German bobsledder Lisa Buckwitz and Belgian speed skater Bart Swings, according to a company announcement carried by Podnews.
It even runs a safe-for-work series following athletes at big moments in their careers. This isn't a scandal the platform quietly tolerates. It's a content vertical it's deliberately building.
The Olympians: funding the dream
A whole cohort of Olympic athletes has joined, frequently to fund the training their medals never paid for. Winter Olympians in particular are bankrolling Milano-Cortina 2026 campaigns directly. Bobsledder Lisa Buckwitz, who joined in 2024, offers subscriptions ranging from roughly €59 for three months to nearly €195 a year, framing her content as a look at the grit behind elite sport, The Tab reported. Speed skater Bart Swings, chasing another medal in 2026, is on the platform as well.
For Olympic hopefuls in expensive, low-revenue disciplines, a subscription page can be the difference between competing and quitting. The Games offer glory; they rarely offer a salary, and the gap is exactly what these accounts fill.
The boxers, footballers and the rest
The spread across sports is genuinely wide. Boxing has several names, including Australian world champion Ebanie Bridges and two-time Olympic gold medalist Robeisy Ramirez. Cricket's Tymal Mills made headlines when he joined. In 2026, Premier League defender Kieran Trippier was linked to the platform in press reports — reported rather than confirmed, and worth treating as such.
New Zealand rower Robbie Manson has been unusually candid, saying he earns roughly double what he made as an active athlete and calling the decision a "no-brainer," per widely-circulated reports. The common thread across all of them isn't the sport, the country or the medal count. It's the economics.
The economics that explain all of it
Here is the fact underneath the entire trend. Most professional athletes earn under $100,000 a year, and many make far less, The Village Voice reported — a reality that sits awkwardly against the public image of sports wealth.
OnlyFans offers those athletes a direct income stream that doesn't depend on prize money, sponsors, or a federation's approval. And the market is substantial: US fans spent an estimated $2.63 billion on the platform in 2025, AOL reported, citing OnlyGuider. It also rewards exactly what athletes have — messages drive 69.74% of creator revenue, The Globe and Mail reported, citing an OnlyGuider study, and a devoted sports fanbase converts unusually well to that kind of direct interaction. For an athlete with real fame and a bank balance that doesn't match it, the math is simple.
It's often not what you'd assume
A necessary correction: much of this content isn't explicit. Athletes routinely post training footage, behind-the-scenes access and personal updates, and some — including divers who've spoken publicly about joining "for some more money" — explicitly rule out full nudity. The platform's own athlete push leans on its safe-for-work arm.
The reflexive assumption that an athlete's OnlyFans must be racy is, for a large share of them, simply wrong. For many it functions as a fitness-and-access channel with a paywall — closer to a premium behind-the-scenes subscription than to what the platform is famous for.
How fans find the real accounts
With so many athletes joining, and impersonators common, finding a verified, active page happens off the platform, because OnlyFans provides no directory of its own. A directory that ranks famous women with a page and other public figures by category is how a fan confirms an athlete's genuine page rather than a convincing fake. As the roster grows, that verification layer matters more, not less — a fake "athlete" page is one of the easier scams to fall for.
The caveats
Read the numbers with care. The earnings claims here are almost entirely self-reported — the "I earn double" figures are the athletes' own, not audited. Some reported links, such as a footballer being "spotted" with an account, are exactly that: reported, not confirmed. OnlyGuider's figures are modelled estimates. And participation is fluid — athletes join, pause and leave — so any roster is a snapshot of a single moment rather than a permanent list.