Athlete Financing
“I’m not a porn star”: OnlyFans as a sponsor for the Olympic dream
Success alone often brings little money. In order to be able to afford competitive sports, creative financing ideas are required. Some show naked skin, others collect money on the Internet.
Lisa Buckwitz likes to show what she has – just not everything. “I will definitely not show myself naked,” emphasizes the bobsledder, who sometimes presents herself very revealingly on the erotic platform OnlyFans. And not just because she is rather extroverted and very happy with her body. “It’s also a stroke of luck for me because I can finance my team this way,” said the 2024 world champion of the German Press Agency. The collaboration with OnlyFans, which began a year ago, was therefore “the best thing that could have happened to me”.
Simply by acquiring conventional sponsors, Buckwitz would not have the financial opportunities that she can now use with a view to the Olympic Games in February in Italy. Other athletes are also increasingly taking unusual paths in order to be able to afford competitive sports: crowdfunding, nude calendars, Tiktok content. The money from sports aid, public funds and local sponsors alone is often not enough.
Without self-promotion, “no one is interested in Lisa Buckwitz”
It was “a little sad,” said Buckwitz, “that I can’t just do my competitive sport.” At the same time, she also had to market herself – even after winning Olympic gold in 2018 as a pusher at the time. “Sure, I’m an Olympic champion. But no one is interested in Lisa Buckwitz just with the gold medal. Unfortunately, that’s the dark side of the medal,” said Buckwitz in the ZDF documentary “OnlyBob – My Body. My Capital.”
She calculated that a bobsleigh season with training camp, flight tickets, material costs and bonuses for her pushers would cost around 50,000 euros. Money that she also brings in through her pictures, videos and activities on the erotic platform. “For me it’s a sponsor who makes sport possible for me alongside the Bundeswehr. So it’s something completely normal,” says Buckwitz. But she admits that sexuality is “of course an issue”.
Bob pusher on OnlyFans: “I’m not a porn star”
The athlete – sometimes in a sports bra, sometimes in a bikini, sometimes in a skin-tight bobsleigh suit – constantly provides content on the platform and also communicates with her fans. After all, they pay $24.99 per month and expect a certain level of proximity to the athlete. “It’s not a burden, it’s more of a positive thing,” says the 31-year-old.
Bob pusher Georg Fleischhauer also has an account on OnlyFans, where there are plenty of actors from the porn business. But he emphasizes: “I’m not a porn star.” There he had the chance to give “an insight into the life of a top athlete”. “And of course also show our bodies and our muscles.”
Pair skaters make ends meet with mixed financing
Six speed skaters from Erfurt also showed their skin. Hendrik Dombek, Max Strübe, Stefan Emele, Felix Maly, Konstantin Götze and Sophie Warmuth modeled for the nude calendar “Eis, Eis, Baby 2026”. The sextet raised around 3,500 euros from a similar campaign last year. This made it possible to close a financing gap for athletes.
The pair skaters Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel earn extra money through social media, among other things; their Tiktok account has more than 148,000 followers. “We have found a good solution for ourselves – partly self-financed, partly through the association, partly through shows and also prize money,” says Kunkel. His figure skating partner Hocke recalls that the duo started 2023 feeling “in the red” financially and that creative solutions were unavoidable: “It’s almost like an additional job.”
Crowdfunding saved the career of world champions
Quite a few athletes have already come into contact with crowdfunding. Money is collected over the Internet for a specific purpose. Crowdfunding once saved the career of Swiss ski racer Franjo von Allmen when he was hit financially by the death of his father at the age of 17. Fans donated so much money that von Allmen was able to finance another season. He thought back to that when he was crowned double world champion last year.
All of these actions are “absolutely legitimate,” says biathlete Danilo Riethmüller. He and most of his teammates don’t have to resort to it because there are comparatively well-paid sponsorship contracts and bonuses in biathlon. In addition, most of them are employed by the police, the armed forces or customs. But not all competitive athletes have these conditions – they have to be creative. “I don’t pillory anyone because they’re a little naked or something,” says Riethmüller.
dpa
