OnlyFans is facing a group claim in England over what the company leading the case calls "exploitative" arrangements with third-party managers who routinely deprive creators of their earnings, Law360 reported on Wednesday. The claim comes four months after a BBC investigation into the same management industry. One of the platform's best-known creators has been talking about the problem all year.
In five long-form interviews between February and June 2026, Ari Kytsya described managers who took half her income, contracts that claimed ownership of her content, being locked out of her own account, and the same sales pitch again and again.
Kytsya has not commented on the claim, and nothing reported so far suggests she is involved in it.
"The first person was taking half of my money"
Photo: People
Her most detailed telling came in June, on Holly Madison's YouWish podcast. She said she'd had several bad management deals. Of the first one: "the first person was taking half of my money. They weren't doing anything."
That manager, she said, set weekly video quotas and leaned on the contract: "'You're in a contract. You know, we own your content … We can do whatever we want with it.'"
It got worse with later managers. "I've had other managers that had like locked me out of my account and like taken money out of it," she told Madison. She also described being "tricked" into signing a new contract "that had like different people on it."
One agency she talked to pitched itself as run by women. "Even some of the companies that I've talked to in the past that are like, 'We're a womanowned agency.' And then you go to sign the contract. I'm like, 'What? Who's this man at the bottom that signed it?'"
(Holly Madison, YouWish, June 18, 2026)
Half is the going rate
Photo: People
Kytsya's numbers line up with what the BBC found. Its investigation, which spoke to 60 UK creators, reported that many management agreements gave managers about half of a creator's earnings, with some contracts claiming up to 70%. That cut came before the creator was paid and on top of OnlyFans' own 20% fee. Several creators told the BBC that managers had changed their passwords or restricted access to their own profiles.
Kytsya described who takes that cut in March, on Becca Moore's For the Girls podcast.
"A lot of the managements are like a fucking hype beast guy like decides like I'm going to start an OnlyFans management," she said, "and then they hire chatters that are in like the Philippines or like some other country … pay them like literally nothing and then they take a percentage from the girls."
(Becca Moore, For the Girls, March 17, 2026)
Fake money promises, and the pitch after the ban
Photo: Complex
The recruiting pitch, in her telling, is always the same. On the Trash Tuesday podcast in March she remembered the early approaches: "multiple like scammy ass like men managers that were like, 'You're going to make millions of dollars. We're going to help you.' and like take all of my money and like put me in like weird contracts."
The million-dollar promise is part of the problem, she said in February on It Girl's Search Bar. Asked for the biggest lie people believe about OnlyFans money: "How much people make. Biggest lie that everybody believes because managements tell girls to lie about how much they make." Her estimate for most of the industry: "like a hundred to like $1,000 a month."
She also described a tactic she believes is common. After one of her TikTok bans, she said, "other management companies will do it because they want me to like sign with them and they'll like message you right away being like, 'Oh, saw you got banned. Like our team has a great person that can recover your account.'"
(Trash Tuesday, March 31, 2026; It Girl, Search Bar, February 20, 2026)
Her answer: no manager at all
Photo: People
"I have honestly recently even changed my mind about management," she told Madison in June. Her earlier advice had been to research an agency and talk to the girls who'd worked with it. Now: "I don't think that it's necessary for anybody to have a manager … I've never seen a situation where a manager really is helping anybody that much."
She told Moore her team is two assistants plus help reposting clips, and that her sisters filmed her early TikToks. "It's more rewarding knowing that you're doing it all yourself and that you're not giving a random man money," she said.
On the management business as a whole, she told Madison: "I find that management's really just are people that are like, 'Oh, this is an industry that makes a lot of money. How can I get a piece of that?'" And: "I really don't think there's any reason to have a management company or an agency."
Managers also made her list of dating red flags. Asked by Madison what she'd sworn off before her current relationship: "guys that want to start an only fans management randomly when they're they're dating you."
What the claim alleges, and what OnlyFans says
Few details of the English claim have been made public. Law360 reported that it targets arrangements between creators and third-party managers. It did not name the firm bringing the case, how many creators it represents, or what it seeks.
OnlyFans has previously said it has no formal relationship with management agencies, does not endorse them, and cannot influence contracts creators sign off the platform, according to coverage of the BBC investigation. The claim's allegations have not been tested in court.
Kytsya's experiences are her own and separate from the claim. Her advice to new creators, from the March Trash Tuesday episode: "Hey, don't just like hop into this without educating yourself."