Avery Poppinga estimates it costs her about $50,000 a year to be a professional beach volleyball player. Coaching, flights, hotels, gym memberships, gear—nearly all paid out of pocket.
USA Volleyball provides stipends to only its top four teams, and even those athletes tend to have side hustles and roommates. In 2024, Poppinga was working a remote job when her best friend, a fellow beach volleyball pro, turned her on to OnlyFans.
The subscription platform launched in 2016 and became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly for adult content. But over the past two years, OnlyFans has quietly built one of the more unusual sponsorship portfolios in professional athletics, signing deals with speedskaters, bobsledders, cliff divers, surfers, motorcycle racers, ultrarunners, and tennis players.
About 285 professional athletes now use the platform, according to an OnlyFans spokesperson, who tells Front Office Sports the company is “especially passionate about creating opportunities for athletes in smaller or niche sports, where funding and audience-building opportunities can often be more limited.”
Poppinga, now 27, joined the platform and, in February 2025, signed an official sponsorship deal. Her former manager had connected her with the team at OFTV, the company’s safe-for-work video streaming arm, and she signed a deal to film a series of videos, wear the company’s merch while competing, and promote the platform on social media.
