Speaker 1: Pushkin before we start a warning. Our investigation looks into
Speaker 1: power and the porn industry. This episode contains adult themes.
Speaker 1: In previous episodes, we've told you about men at the
Speaker 1: top of porn, their ambition, their power battles, their relentless
Speaker 1: efforts to remain unknown to the world. We looked at
Speaker 1: how they cornered the most lucrative parts of the adult business,
Speaker 1: either by owning tech platforms or production studios or both.
Speaker 1: Porn profits flowed to owners and middlemen, but not so
Speaker 1: much to performers. Now we're going to tell you about
Speaker 1: the company that reset the ballot, the company that, whether
Speaker 1: it intended to or not, managed to shift money and
Speaker 1: power back to performers in a huge way. You may
Speaker 1: have heard its name. He became so popular during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Even my mother had heard its name. We're talking about
Speaker 1: Only Fans. Only Fans as a social media platform just
Speaker 1: like those you use already, but which allows you to
Speaker 1: set a monthly subscription price, ensuring that any media you
Speaker 1: upload is fully hidden until your fans pay your subscription.
Speaker 1: We are not the average demographic. We are on the
Speaker 1: more mature sides of your typical webcam broadcaster, This is Peppermint.
Speaker 1: It's the stage name she uses for the adult enterprise
Speaker 1: she runs with her husband, Dusty, also a stage name.
Speaker 1: Our shows can run anywhere between four to eight hours
Speaker 1: eight hours time. All of that is sexual engagement. We
Speaker 1: have amazing conversations with our viewers. We like to dive
Speaker 1: deep into the meaning of life and relationships and sexuality.
Speaker 1: We met at a pawn event in la where Dusty
Speaker 1: and Peppermint were promoting their business and meeting fans. They're
Speaker 1: mainly known for their live video work on campsites those
Speaker 1: a tower shows that can include sex, fire, spinning, acrobatic yoga,
Speaker 1: and cooking, trying to promote real sex between real people
Speaker 1: rather than a fantasy scenario created by a studio. Over time,
Speaker 1: they've branched out selling clips on video platforms and reaching
Speaker 1: their most loyal supporters through an only Fans account. So
Speaker 1: with the explosion of people turning to only Fans, turning
Speaker 1: to content creation, turning to online work, I think there
Speaker 1: is a lot more acceptance of it in the mainstream audience.
Speaker 1: Only Fans is a platform that launched in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It's basically a special kind of social media site. It
Speaker 1: lets you message followers or upload videos or posts, just
Speaker 1: like Instagram or Facebook. The twist with only Fans is
Speaker 1: that your content lives behind a paywall. Visitors pay you
Speaker 1: to view it. They can even pay you to produce
Speaker 1: media just for them. This seemingly small difference the paywall
Speaker 1: changed how a whole generation of online stars earned their living. Influencers, musicians,
Speaker 1: fitness instructors, but especially porn stars. Only Fans made the
Speaker 1: industry's most famous performers seriously rich. Some have earned millions
Speaker 1: and allowed them to make videos at home on their
Speaker 1: own terms. Most Only Fans creators are and big stars,
Speaker 1: but more like Peppermint and Dusty, the PM has allowed
Speaker 1: them to generate a modest study income. It made it
Speaker 1: easier than ever to make money from porn until the
Speaker 1: moment Only Fans announced that porn wouldn't be welcome anymore.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about the day that Only Fans
Speaker 1: banned porn? We had actually been on a trip up
Speaker 1: to the mountains, and we had gone just to a
Speaker 1: different locations so we could shoot some new content specifically
Speaker 1: for only Fans. I opened up the app on my
Speaker 1: phone and I see Twitter, and I see all these
Speaker 1: posts about only fans banning porn. So I remember driving
Speaker 1: down the mountains seeing our follower account just drop literally
Speaker 1: in half, which means we also lost half of our income.
Speaker 1: I think that these rules and these changes almost affect
Speaker 1: the smaller creators more so. The platform that totally transformed
Speaker 1: the pawn industry decided to ban pawn to become a
Speaker 1: safe for work service. Then just one week later, Only
Speaker 1: Fans changed its mind. Pawn was okay again. They canceled
Speaker 1: the cancelation. It was so farcical. Only Fans made headlines
Speaker 1: around the world. And what about them when they reversed
Speaker 1: the band? How did you feel them? You always kind
Speaker 1: of sit there and wonder when it's going to happen again,
Speaker 1: and you know what's going to be the next trigger.
Speaker 1: Why are they going to do it this time? What happened?
Speaker 1: We decided to seek out only fans and where it
Speaker 1: came from a close knit family from Essex, the New
Speaker 1: Jersey of England. They're the most miscast porn barons you
Speaker 1: can imagine, and yet they somehow confirmed power and porn
Speaker 1: is all about the payments. I'm Alex Barker, I'm Patrician
Speaker 1: Nelson from Pushkin Industries. And the Financial Times. This is
Speaker 1: hot Money, Act one financial domination. We set out to
Speaker 1: follow Only Fans to its source and it brought us
Speaker 1: to a big gated house on the south coast of England,
Speaker 1: the home of Danny Harwood. Danny was the very first
Speaker 1: creator to join Only Fans when it launched. Hi everyone,
Speaker 1: my name's Danny. Welcome to my Only Fans page. Come
Speaker 1: enjoy me have a little chat. Can I see all
Speaker 1: my sexy selfies? And let's have some fun boys. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that part of the story, we
Speaker 1: have to tell you how she first met Tim Stokely,
Speaker 1: the mind behind Only Fans. It all started about twelve
Speaker 1: years ago. Danny was in her late twenties making her
Speaker 1: living as a glamor model and one day a man
Speaker 1: called Tim walked into her life with a mad cat
Speaker 1: plan to transform her into goddess Danielle. So can you
Speaker 1: tell us when and where you first met him? He
Speaker 1: contacted me for a photo shoet, having seen me on TV,
Speaker 1: and he turned up in a all roy suit with
Speaker 1: a briefcase and a copy of The Financial Times under
Speaker 1: his arm. It was just a bit who is this guy?
Speaker 1: Tim was carrying a Financial Times because his father was
Speaker 1: a banker. His brother was a banker, and Tim may
Speaker 1: have become a banker too if he didn't have other
Speaker 1: interests he wanted to pursue. He was starting a new business,
Speaker 1: a fetish side called glam Worship. He sort of looked
Speaker 1: like he was just about to go for a board meeting,
Speaker 1: not a photo shoot. That he was young, a fairly
Speaker 1: good looking guy, and just very smart and very well spoken.
Speaker 1: And he's like, right, okay, Danny, and if you just
Speaker 1: like just sit over there, and he's like, just look
Speaker 1: at the camera. He was so wonder prepared. He was
Speaker 1: so nervous. This was Tim's first shoot for glam Worship.
Speaker 1: Danny was the first model. He used his briefcase as
Speaker 1: a camera stand. And here's the extraordinary part. The origins
Speaker 1: of Only Fans can be traced straight back to the
Speaker 1: kink the website served this fetish for financial domination. Out
Speaker 1: of the photoshoot would emerge Goddess Danielle her Page told
Speaker 1: visitors it was the luckiest day of their pathetic existence.
Speaker 1: Girls would talk about financially dominating men. That's what the
Speaker 1: fetish was. So the woman is in charge and therefore
Speaker 1: they should give their money to the woman, and because
Speaker 1: they're not worthy of that money. Financial domination, the art
Speaker 1: of the finndom is not something we have made up
Speaker 1: for a Financial Times podcast about money and porn. We promise, Hello, slaves, Well,
Speaker 1: you've probably been watching me for quite a while now,
Speaker 1: haven't you seeing me grow from strength to strengths? By now?
Speaker 1: I have lots of loyal little followers, lots of loyal submissives.
Speaker 1: Some people will literally pay for the thrill of becoming
Speaker 1: a financial slave. Tim was gripped scenarios for Danny to
Speaker 1: perform to her fans or pay pets. Danny's financial slaves
Speaker 1: never actually handed over all their money even if they
Speaker 1: wanted to. They probably couldn't. The tech was still clunky,
Speaker 1: almost hacked together. Danny's pay pets could buy her stuff
Speaker 1: from an Amazon wish list or send checks to a
Speaker 1: numbered postbox. But the pay pets could never get Goddess
Speaker 1: Danielle's personal attention. They couldn't ask for her custom videos
Speaker 1: or directly fill her bank account with money. The flaws
Speaker 1: were obvious. Tim launched other ventures, hoping to solve them.
Speaker 1: Many other ventures, and after some painful trial and error,
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, something new came together a sight then
Speaker 1: actually worked Only Fans a platform that combined interaction, tailor
Speaker 1: made content, and a direct connection between the fan and
Speaker 1: the performer, including yes payment, with only Fans taking a
Speaker 1: twenty percent cut. Danny was one of the first to
Speaker 1: hear Tim's idea, It's like, so people can tip you
Speaker 1: on that. I was like, what, they can tip you?
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, I was like, okay, that's a game changer.
Speaker 1: This was the start of a new era. If video
Speaker 1: streaming made pawn three, Only Fans was one of the
Speaker 1: sites that began to turn the tide. People were paying
Speaker 1: for pawn again, actually getting their credit cards out, and
Speaker 1: not just to pay pornographers, a studio or a website owner.
Speaker 1: They were paying the performers direct. It was a slow start,
Speaker 1: but as new features were introduced, partly on Danny's advice,
Speaker 1: the money started rolling in through Only Fans. Danny found
Speaker 1: a way to tap her Instagram and Twitter. Following I
Speaker 1: went from earning one month between three and six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: My next earnings was twenty two thousand. Tim asked Danny
Speaker 1: to spread the word, so she spoke with friends at
Speaker 1: the Glamor TV channel where she performed Girls as this website,
Speaker 1: you have to join it. You look at my bank statement.
Speaker 1: To look at the statement. This is what I'm being paid,
Speaker 1: this is what you could earn. They're like, wow, so
Speaker 1: quickly find them up. Danny told us that performers started
Speaker 1: leaving because they were earning so much money from their
Speaker 1: only Fans accounts and keeping most of it going into
Speaker 1: the changing room. One day and my boss had put
Speaker 1: these posters up in the changing room walled saying that
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to film any content for only fans,
Speaker 1: otherwise you're going to get the sack. They hated it.
Speaker 1: Danny says she eventually became the first to have a
Speaker 1: million dollar page to her and for many established performers,
Speaker 1: the control only Fans provided was a sort of liberation.
Speaker 1: It gave them freedom and the power that comes with money.
Speaker 1: They were being paid well enough to have leverage in
Speaker 1: the industry, something that in an age of free porm
Speaker 1: was sorely lacking. Today, Danny is still on the platform,
Speaker 1: not as God as Danielle, but under another name. She
Speaker 1: crowned herself to the Queen of Only Fans. After all
Speaker 1: these years, she is still friends with the Stokely family,
Speaker 1: and that's who we spoke with next. That's after the
Speaker 1: break act two, The Stokelease. We hopped in a car
Speaker 1: with our producer Pete Sale and headed to bishop Stortford,
Speaker 1: a rural commuter town to the northeast of London. It's
Speaker 1: near the home of the Stokelease, but not a typical
Speaker 1: spot for a company headquarters, which I should Where are
Speaker 1: we going and why? I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce it. The Bishop's destroyed great staff podcasts already. We're
Speaker 1: in the car. We're on our way to meet up
Speaker 1: with Tim and guys Stokely. We are walking past the
Speaker 1: only Fans headquarters, which are in a converted barn called
Speaker 1: Fish Barn. It looks like the south of Sweden, but
Speaker 1: we're just next to us are a couple of grain silos.
Speaker 1: It feels pretty rural. There's a thatched roof over there.
Speaker 1: Who's not why you expect businesses not make me think
Speaker 1: adult content. We were greeted by the founder, Tim Stokely
Speaker 1: and taken to a conference room overlooking a pond. My
Speaker 1: first podcast. Yeah yeah. Tim doesn't often do recorded interviews.
Speaker 1: He has a bit of a playboy image in the press.
Speaker 1: His instagram is full of glam shots of Abitha and
Speaker 1: sharp cut suits, but when we met him, that's not
Speaker 1: how he came across at all. He was almost shy,
Speaker 1: hardly the guide that was once called the King of
Speaker 1: homemade porn. He first ended up in the adult industry
Speaker 1: in part because the financial crash hit the job market
Speaker 1: in the city of London. Since he couldn't follow his
Speaker 1: father and brother into banking, he tried something else, starting
Speaker 1: internet businesses from scratch. Lots of his ideas failed miserably,
Speaker 1: but the ones in the adult business pointed him in
Speaker 1: the right direction. A lot of the models we were
Speaker 1: working with were getting inundated with private requests asking to
Speaker 1: produce these tailored custom videos. The seed of Only Fans
Speaker 1: was planted when Only Fans launched. It was intended to
Speaker 1: be for everyone. There was no homepage with porn stars,
Speaker 1: no search function to find them. There still isn't. It
Speaker 1: was really designed to be an add on service for
Speaker 1: the social media profiles that people already had. It allowed
Speaker 1: them to monetize their online following, but the creators, musicians,
Speaker 1: or influencers or fitness instructors had to bring their own
Speaker 1: fan base with them, and the first ones to do
Speaker 1: it were the porn stars. I think the adult industry
Speaker 1: is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to
Speaker 1: new tech, and I think content behind a payball model
Speaker 1: really really suited. How did you raise the money for it?
Speaker 1: That was my father, Guy, Guy Stokely is a former
Speaker 1: merchant banker. If Tim is an unlikely pornographer, Guy is
Speaker 1: a complete fish out of water. Before only fans Guy
Speaker 1: was retired. He's mild mannered and ever so polite. Tim
Speaker 1: phone me and said, I've got this really good idea, Dad,
Speaker 1: and I kind of explained that the premise of paid
Speaker 1: social media, and he told me about it, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Picture that thought bubble coming from Guy's head.
Speaker 1: Oh god, not again. There was a healthy amount of skepticism.
Speaker 1: Guid invested in some of the previous platforms. Some have
Speaker 1: gone really well, some really badly. After many attempts that
Speaker 1: to convince him, I remember Guy saying, okay, okay, but
Speaker 1: this is the last one. The early days for Tim
Speaker 1: were a hard slog. He sent hundreds of emails to
Speaker 1: performers and influencers trying to explain how much money they
Speaker 1: could make on Only Fans. I remember receiving one email
Speaker 1: from one influencer saying, this is hands down the most
Speaker 1: stupid business idea I've ever heard in my life. Only
Speaker 1: Fans launched in twenty sixteen. One thing that really put
Speaker 1: the wind in its sails was a clever referral program
Speaker 1: giving creators a cut of other people's earnings if they
Speaker 1: brought to the platform. Guy thought Tim's goal of half
Speaker 1: a million pounds revenue in twenty seventeen was totally ridiculous.
Speaker 1: They ended up with two point four million pounds. A
Speaker 1: lot of the creators were adult performers and sitting with
Speaker 1: the stoke. Please, that's something you can easily forget. They
Speaker 1: don't seem like pawn. People mentioned nudity, and Guy almost
Speaker 1: starts to blush. I didn't think of it as being adult.
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested in adult, but it was about sporting. Tim.
Speaker 1: This was genuinely a family business. Tim was CEO and guide,
Speaker 1: the chief financial officer and supportive father. Tim's sister and
Speaker 1: his two brothers were involved. Two. But then in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: at a point when only Fans was growing fast and
Speaker 1: showing it had real potential, the Stoke please did something surprising.
Speaker 1: They decided it was time to bring in an outside
Speaker 1: of fester. They sold only Fans but stayed on as
Speaker 1: the executive team. Within a year of selling, their platform
Speaker 1: just exploded in popularity. Only Fans is massively a part
Speaker 1: of the pop cultures. Igeist right now, Cardibi's on the platform,
Speaker 1: Chris Brown, Now, why are you tipping this? Rich man?
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna start a holy fans Please do it?
Speaker 1: Lonny Love, Michael B. Jordan's mustache. Beyonce even name dropped
Speaker 1: only fans in a song if she might start at
Speaker 1: only fans. During the pandemic, it reached two million creators
Speaker 1: and one hundred and eighty million users, A significant proportion
Speaker 1: of them were buying or selling pawn. Only Fans gave
Speaker 1: the tired old pawn industry a new lease of life,
Speaker 1: and everything on the site was behind a paywall, so
Speaker 1: much harder for children to access. But with the success
Speaker 1: came a lot of bad press for Tim. There were,
Speaker 1: of course stereotypes about the bling essex man making millions
Speaker 1: from pawn, but also unease over only fans, normalizing pornography,
Speaker 1: making it seem just like any other career a lot
Speaker 1: of men and women saw the huge payout to top
Speaker 1: porn stars and thought, I can give this a try.
Speaker 1: But most couldn't build a big enough following, and some
Speaker 1: probably realized porn wasn't something you can just dabble in
Speaker 1: and regretted trying anyway. It's fair to say Only Fans
Speaker 1: really caught a cultural moment and courted plenty of controversy.
Speaker 1: We of course focused on the business side and the money.
Speaker 1: What you need to understand is what makes Only Fans different.
Speaker 1: It succeeded not just because it could take money, but
Speaker 1: because it could pay it out. It built a financial
Speaker 1: bridge from fans credit cards straight to the bank accounts
Speaker 1: of creators. The bigger Only Fans became, the more its
Speaker 1: reputation was associated with a pawn revival, and the more
Speaker 1: nervous banks got moving its money around the world. So
Speaker 1: nervous one bank even stopped providing a personal bank account
Speaker 1: to Tim's brother, a former banker, just because he was
Speaker 1: involved in running Only Fans. It's a very strange way
Speaker 1: to act, but it was, you know. That's what happened. Then,
Speaker 1: in the summer of twenty twenty one, the dam burst
Speaker 1: Only Fans. The platform that changed the adult industry announced
Speaker 1: it was going to ban pawn Performers were totally stunned.
Speaker 1: Only fans will prohibit the posting of any content containing
Speaker 1: sexually explicit kind act. That leaves a lot of people
Speaker 1: worried about what's going to happen into the At least
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of creators on the platform, who, particularly
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, have made a lot of money from
Speaker 1: the safety of their haunts. Hiss, think back to the
Speaker 1: decision to ban explicit content, and yeah, what were you
Speaker 1: trying to achieve when you first made that announcement. Well,
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't a strategic move really, Yeah, absolutely, Here,
Speaker 1: we have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: to creators globally each month. You know, when you have
Speaker 1: to move that amount of money, you depend upon large
Speaker 1: investment banks, and we were seeing an increasing amount of
Speaker 1: wires being flagged, with some investment banks citing things like
Speaker 1: reputational risk. The precise trigger of their decision remains unclear. Here,
Speaker 1: Tim is describing the choice as a practical matter. His
Speaker 1: company's transfers were being flagged, marked down for extra checks
Speaker 1: by banks moving their money around the world. A lot
Speaker 1: of banks don't want to be associated with porn. The
Speaker 1: abrupt announcement completely through the industry. The uproar from performers
Speaker 1: was deafening. Big stars or less well known performers like
Speaker 1: Peppermint and Dusty. They relied on only fans for their livelihoods,
Speaker 1: and they were furious. And after a week of mayhem,
Speaker 1: only Fans reversed its decision. Porn went from banned too
Speaker 1: okay again all inside seven days. People who earn money
Speaker 1: on the website only fans may have a bad case
Speaker 1: of whiplash tonight, what a walk back. I guess The
Speaker 1: question is has the damage already been done? Some users
Speaker 1: really saw this as a move of only fans selling out.
Speaker 1: Only Fans said its original decision to ban porn was
Speaker 1: due to pressure from banking and payment services, but now
Speaker 1: it has secured assurances necessary to keep things as is.
Speaker 1: To everyone watching, the handling looked totally botched. It was
Speaker 1: mocked on social media and compared to Domino's trying to
Speaker 1: ban Peter. The lack of any convincing explanation at the
Speaker 1: time also fed all sorts of conspiracy theories. Tim actually
Speaker 1: insists the reversal was enabled by an interview he did
Speaker 1: with me over the phone last year. It was for
Speaker 1: a piece in the Financial Times that brands straight after
Speaker 1: the ban, where he named some of the banks causing
Speaker 1: only fans problems. After that article was published, he said
Speaker 1: the mood changed, the banks gave him the assurances he needed.
Speaker 1: Do you have regrets on how you handled it? Looking back?
Speaker 1: Not on how it was handled. I don't think we
Speaker 1: had much of a choice, but I deeply regret amount
Speaker 1: of concern an anxiety it caused. I mean for a
Speaker 1: lot of people it was it's like being cut down
Speaker 1: at the knees and why should they trust any fans
Speaker 1: not to do this again? And well, I you know,
Speaker 1: I think what this, what this put a spotlight on,
Speaker 1: was the discriminatory policies within the banking system, and that's
Speaker 1: where the focus is. I think Tim here is talking
Speaker 1: about banks making life difficult for companies just because they're
Speaker 1: associated with adult content. The problem isn't necessarily allowing pawn
Speaker 1: on a platform. Twitter, for instance, permits adult content on
Speaker 1: parts of its platform and hosts lots of pawn without
Speaker 1: much trouble. The issue start when a company has so
Speaker 1: much pawn or makes so much money from pawn it
Speaker 1: starts to look like a pawn company. After that, basic
Speaker 1: finance dries up, banking becomes harder and a lot more expensive.
Speaker 1: There are lots of people in the pawn industry who
Speaker 1: find it hard to believe that only fans got cold
Speaker 1: feet for a mundane reason like financing. They are still
Speaker 1: convinced the whole pawn band fiasco was actually a publicity stunt,
Speaker 1: some cunning plan that's that's entirely false. I think we've
Speaker 1: perhaps been victim to some you know, unfair reporting, which
Speaker 1: you know it has led to some criticism that is
Speaker 1: based on moral outrage rather than evidence or facts or statistics.
Speaker 1: Couldn't you have had that conversation with your financial partners before,
Speaker 1: you know, if they were all happy? Couldn't you have
Speaker 1: gone to your financial partners? I said, we could we
Speaker 1: have handled it in a different way. Years of course
Speaker 1: we could. Um, but um, We're happy where we ended. Huh.
Speaker 1: At the end of our interviews, the Stoke Please took
Speaker 1: us to their office. In there was another brother wearing
Speaker 1: a wooly jumper that looked like an early Christmas present.
Speaker 1: There were ducks wandering around a patio, crooked trinkets on
Speaker 1: the desks. It seemed just a setting for a charming
Speaker 1: family business. But for only fans. Something didn't quite seem right,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. We'll be right back Act three, reading
Speaker 1: the fine print. Within three weeks of us visiting, the
Speaker 1: Stoke Please had left only fans. Tim stepped down as
Speaker 1: chief executive and guy and the rest of the family followed.
Speaker 1: Just like that, the Stoke Please had gone. We'll admit it.
Speaker 1: We were confused. We called them to ask what happened.
Speaker 1: We didn't get much of an answer. Now, the story
Speaker 1: of the Stoke These and only fans that you heard earlier,
Speaker 1: that was all true, the family business, the way only
Speaker 1: fans democratized porn. But we later learned that was only
Speaker 1: one side of the story. Like looking at a movie
Speaker 1: sets from a single camera. It didn't explain why the
Speaker 1: Stokelees left only fans, or that crazy hokey cokey over
Speaker 1: banning porn, or why they sold their company when it
Speaker 1: was doing so well in twenty eighteen. To figure out
Speaker 1: what was going on, we need to rewind and look
Speaker 1: out of shot, and that starts with the current owner,
Speaker 1: the guy who bought only Fans from the Stoke Lease
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. Now, plenty of investors have attempted to
Speaker 1: buy only Fans over the years, mainstream investors. But when
Speaker 1: the Stoke Lease sold, it was to a man called
Speaker 1: Leo Radvinski, a forty year old Ukrainian American who made
Speaker 1: his fortune in the pawn industry. We'd love to have
Speaker 1: spoken to him, but he declined he's not one for publicity.
Speaker 1: Here's what Tim told us about Leo when we visited.
Speaker 1: You know, he's been absolutely joy to work with and
Speaker 1: such a smart guy, and there's a huge reason we
Speaker 1: are where we are. Remember, in twenty eighteen, Only Fans
Speaker 1: was a fast growing business, but it hadn't really caught fire.
Speaker 1: The good times were ahead. So why did the Stoke
Speaker 1: Lease give it all up to Leo Radvinski. Tim was
Speaker 1: kg with his reasons for selling only Fans, but he
Speaker 1: did give us a few clues. I mean, what I
Speaker 1: can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
Speaker 1: we made. It's very kind of hands on and adds
Speaker 1: so much value to the technical part of the business.
Speaker 1: And then he also works to an extent on the
Speaker 1: payments side. We didn't think much of it at a
Speaker 1: time Leo os tech. He made his career running a
Speaker 1: live video porn side called my Free Camps. But when
Speaker 1: we listened back, we realized the intriguing part was the
Speaker 1: second half of that sentence. Tim said. Leo also worked
Speaker 1: on the payment side, which raises one blindingly obvious question.
Speaker 1: Why was Leo, the seasoned pornographer, helping a family of
Speaker 1: bankers with payments? So you know, I've been looking for
Speaker 1: an explanation of why the Stokely's sold Only Fans. I
Speaker 1: think I found something, But I have a little confession
Speaker 1: to make. Yeah, it was that. One of my new
Speaker 1: habits is reading the terms and conditions on porn sites.
Speaker 1: The legal fine print. Well, you've sent me one. Should
Speaker 1: I read it out loud? Go ahead? So it says
Speaker 1: you may not create, upload, post, display, or distribute user
Speaker 1: content that is sexually explicit. It doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: porn site, right, No. Well those are the original terms
Speaker 1: and conditions for only Fans from twenty sixteen, So no,
Speaker 1: porn Only Fans didn't allow explicit content from the start,
Speaker 1: nothing exactly, and it more or less stayed that way
Speaker 1: for a year and a half. After Only Fans launched
Speaker 1: even though there was lots of pawn on the site.
Speaker 1: I mean, this really transformed how I understood the whole
Speaker 1: Only Fans venture. It may well have been crucial to
Speaker 1: the entire business model. Was claiming to be palm free,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have palm, you don't have payment trouble.
Speaker 1: The Stoke Please could benefit from easier, cheaper payment processing
Speaker 1: they'd get like any mainstream platform. Well that's a big
Speaker 1: advantage in the porn business. I mean, Only Fans stood
Speaker 1: out when it launched because it only took a twenty
Speaker 1: percent cut of a performer's earnings, when most campsites take
Speaker 1: an average of fifty percent or more. So one of
Speaker 1: the reasons they could offer that was cheaper payment processing.
Speaker 1: And so the Stoke Please just sidestepped higher costs by
Speaker 1: denying there was any porn on the site exactly. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So when did they admit that there was born on
Speaker 1: the side. In the spring of twenty eighteen, and that's
Speaker 1: when the Stoke Please introduced a new adult payment processor,
Speaker 1: a different financial service men to handle all the explicit accounts,
Speaker 1: presumably a much more expensive payment processor. And people in
Speaker 1: the industry told me the only fans. Around this time
Speaker 1: began to struggle with payments in particular, and within six months, Hey,
Speaker 1: Presto the Stoke please had sold only fans. And remember
Speaker 1: Leo is known in the pawn business as a master
Speaker 1: of payments. You had to be to run at pawn camsite.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's lots of micropayments. It's just in the
Speaker 1: nature of the business. And suddenly you think of all that,
Speaker 1: everything that Tim said about selling to Leo just made
Speaker 1: a lot more sense when the payments side got more
Speaker 1: difficult they had to turn to an expert. What I
Speaker 1: can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
Speaker 1: we made. It's not much value in speculating where we'd
Speaker 1: be if we hadn't done it. We'd love to ask
Speaker 1: Leo how he does it, how he his bangs and
Speaker 1: payment processors on side, But like most of Pawn's biggest
Speaker 1: money makers, he's not the time to give interviews. Neither
Speaker 1: would his new management team, who are usually very media friendly.
Speaker 1: The reason is partly Leo's vision for the company. He
Speaker 1: came from the porn world, but he always saw the
Speaker 1: mainstream potential of only fans. For him, that's only fans'
Speaker 1: future fitness instructors and musicians, and that explains a lot.
Speaker 1: When we talk to the Stokeleys about the decision to
Speaker 1: ban Pawn last August, it never seemed like they really
Speaker 1: believed in it. In reality, it was Leo's call to
Speaker 1: him the mainstream promise of only fans was not worth
Speaker 1: risking for Pawn, however much money it made. He has
Speaker 1: visions of bringing in mainstream investors or even floating only
Speaker 1: Fans on the stock market. Only Fans has promised not
Speaker 1: to ditch porn performers again. People like Peppermint and her
Speaker 1: husband Dusty, who we heard from earlier in this episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, they say one thing and then a week
Speaker 1: later they say another thing, and it makes one very
Speaker 1: very hard to trust what's happening with the site itself.
Speaker 1: When is this going to happen again? So it makes it,
Speaker 1: you know, very precarious. Peppermint and Dusty stuck with only
Speaker 1: Fans because it's an important stream of income and it
Speaker 1: didn't seem right to be cutting off loyal subscribers. It's felt,
Speaker 1: in some ways like going back to an abusive partner.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to really stay there, but
Speaker 1: you're kind of stuck. You don't have a lot of choice.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that it means only good things. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe Tim Stokely was tired of having to deal with
Speaker 1: the credit card companies and all the legislation and the rules,
Speaker 1: So handing the reins over to somebody else could possibly
Speaker 1: be a good thing. That's my hope. Indeed, there is
Speaker 1: a weird parallel between all the people we've spoken to
Speaker 1: and told you about in this episode, Peppermint and Dusty,
Speaker 1: the Stokely family, and Leo Radvinski, the pornographer trying to
Speaker 1: go mainstream. You could even make a link to Danny,
Speaker 1: the goddess of financial domination, who had no way to
Speaker 1: be tipped by her pay pets. What all their stories
Speaker 1: taught us was this, if you're not the master of
Speaker 1: your business's payment system, very simply means somebody else is
Speaker 1: in charge. Only fans empowered performers by giving them away
Speaker 1: to receive direct payments from fans. But because only fans
Speaker 1: doesn't control its own payment system, it is caught in
Speaker 1: a bind. It is reliant on pornshy payment companies on
Speaker 1: one side to take in money, and on pornshy bangs
Speaker 1: on the other to pay it out. That's where to
Speaker 1: real power lies. A finance world that seems to have
Speaker 1: a muddled and bizarre relationship with the porn industry and
Speaker 1: the money it brings. What does this all mean for
Speaker 1: porn today? That's our next episode, the season finale. Instead
Speaker 1: of the government defining what is and is not considered
Speaker 1: sexually acceptable, it's a corporation. Hot Money is a production
Speaker 1: of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written
Speaker 1: or reported by me Patrician Elson and me Alex Barker.
Speaker 1: Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer. Edith
Speaker 1: Russolo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurji.
Speaker 1: Amanda Kwong is our engineer. Music composition by Pascal Wise,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
Speaker 1: and Ruler Kalov at The Financial Times and Mia Lobel,
Speaker 1: Lital Molad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton and Jacob Weisberg at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Thank you to a similar Web for providing
Speaker 1: our web traffic data. If you want more from the ft,
Speaker 1: try our new app featuring eight essential stories every weekday
Speaker 1: search ft Edit in the iPhone app Store. Your first
Speaker 1: month is free, and it's ninety nine cents a month
Speaker 1: for six months after that.