{"id":560167,"date":"2026-03-25T17:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560167\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T17:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:20:09","slug":"battle-for-onlyfans-ownership-heats-up-after-death-of-billionaire-owner-leonid-radvinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560167\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle for OnlyFans ownership heats up after death of billionaire owner Leonid Radvinsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

The unexpected death of OnlyFans founder Leonid Radvinsky has opened the door for a major Hollywood player to make a play for the adult content platform.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the company announced that Radvinsky had died of cancer at the age of 43. Few outside of his inner circle were aware of the severity of his illness. Earlier this month, P6H heard that Radvinsky was gravely ill and eager to unload the creator-led behemoth that generated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024, and has hosted everyone from\u00a0Cardi B\u00a0to\u00a0Drea de Matteo\u00a0to\u00a0Whitney Cummings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was desperately trying to put the sale in place because he was worried about his family being taken advantage of,\u201d the source told us Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"OnlyFans\"OnlyFans generated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2024. NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Since it first entered the public conversation, OnlyFans has evolved from being a platform dominated by porn to something more mainstream. Its two biggest areas of growth are in comedy and sports which could make it an attractive asset for more traditional players in the entertainment space.<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0Scooter Braun\u00a0was circling, though deal terms were never reported. Investment firm Forest Road was also reportedly in talks to buy OnlyFans for $8 billion, roughly the same amount the Ellison family spent to acquire Paramount last year. But few in town believed that Forest Road \u2014 a relatively small player in Hollywood which produced\u00a0Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s \u201cThe Kindergarten Teacher\u201d for Netflix and\u00a0Guy Nattiv\u2019s \u201cSkin\u201d for A24 \u2014 could muster that kind of cash.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Bay Area-based Architect Capital was in talks to buy a 60 percent stake of OnlyFans at about $3.5 billion. That deal would\u2019ve put a $5.5 billion valuation on the company. The price presumably dropped $2.5 billion from the possibly inflated numbers floating around during the Forest Road talks thanks to Radvinsky\u2019s health crisis. But that still would leave 40 percent up for grabs for some tech-minded Hollywood player eager to harness those 3 million-plus OnlyFans subscribers.<\/p>\n

The line between Hollywood and the tech industry has become increasingly blurred, especially over the past year as Oracle co-founder\u00a0Larry Ellison\u00a0helped his son\u00a0David\u00a0beat out rival Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. The Ellisons have made no secret of their plans to use AI to create efficiencies across what will be a colossal entity. Ellison also has a $2 billion stake in TikTok (via Oracle), which relies on AI to shape a user\u2019s feed. A decade ago, a serious business discussion of OnlyFans would have been deemed gauche in certain Hollywood circles. Nowadays, given the state of the traditional scripted world, it would be foolish not to consider it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Ari Emanuel\u00a0is said to have kicked the tires on OnlyFans. (A WME rep denied he has expressed any interest.) Still, given that Endeavor is now private, the timing could be right for someone like Emanuel, now the executive chairman of WME Group and CEO of the publicly traded TKO Group who is widely praised for his bets on WWE and the UFC which have paid off massively. \u00a0<\/p>\n

There is also some overlap between Architect and Silver Lake, the private equity firm that helped Emanuel go private when it completed its $25 billion acquisition of Endeavor Group Holdings one year ago.<\/p>\n

\"SophieTop OnlyFans influencer Sophie Rain mourned the platform\u2019s founder this week.<\/p>\n

Architect Capital\u2019s VP\u00a0Carlos Ezquerro\u00a0was also working at Silver Lake in 2023, when formal discussions over Endeavor Group Holdings going private were underway.<\/p>\n

Either way, the HBO hit that created Emanuel\u2019s alleged alter-ego Ari Gold even had a plot line about the\u00a0 profit potential of porn. \u201cWhen Endeavor was started, it was founded partially on a tech play regarding music distribution on the internet,\u201d a source involved with Endeavor\u2019s founding says. \u201cThe tech play became instead about Ari\u2019s friends who became the models for the \u2018Entourage\u2019 crew trying to get into online porn.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unexpected death of OnlyFans founder Leonid Radvinsky has opened the door for a major Hollywood player to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,3335,48,361,75,7607,180661],"class_list":["post-560167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-media","tag-page-six-hollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}