Olympics history-maker Matthew Mitcham on making OnlyFans gold: ‘Loads of people want to see a little more’
Matthew Mitcham. (@matthewmitcham/ Instagram)
Considering the entirety of Matthew Mitcham’s adult life has played out in public, it’s perhaps unsurprising that there are some things he’d like to keep private. Well, private-ish. For $10 a month, Mitcham’s fans can see the things he wants to keep from public view. “Everything,” his OnlyFans bio reads, “that would be banned on Instagram and TikTok.”
When Mitcham set up his OnlyFans account a few years ago, it would have seemed like an outlandish career move for a former Olympian, one who made history at Beijing in 2008 as the first out gay man to win a Gold medal, for diving. Now though, Mitcham, 37, is one of many athletes turning to the platform. British divers Matty Lee, Jack Laughter and more have followed suit; others are Olympic hopefuls setting up accounts to fund their training.
If you crunch the numbers, it makes sense. Mitcham reportedly told the Associated Press in 2024 that on OnlyFans he was earning “triple” what he earned as a top athlete. Plus, he has full control over the content he posts. “I won’t be doing any sex acts or full frontal nudity for the foreseeable future,” his bio on the platform continues. Sure, he’s showing body-ody-ody, but it’s all very much SFW. “My philosophy has always been that if I can defend it as art then I’ll share it,” he says. “It’s not explicit. It’s about selling the sizzle, not the steak.”
Still, the decision to join the platform took deep contemplation. “People just consider it a not safe for work platform, you know, an explicit sex platform. That was out of my control,” says Brisbane-born Mitcham, calling on Zoom from his home in London, where he moved seven years ago. “Sadly, I don’t think it’s right, but there are people in the world who look down upon it. I had to kind of think, well, some people might assume that I’m doing this not safe for work content, and how do I feel about that?”
Mitcham still works in mainstream entertainment spaces. He’s currently performing in queer play Afterglow in Melbourne, and then in Sydney. In 2023, he was on SAS Australia. The fact he is on OnlyFans often does, naturally, creep into conversations before he signs these contracts. He’s not put out by it. “They have to do their due diligence and see what kind of content is being made,” he shrugs. “They just have to exercise an abundance of caution and I get that.” He’ll load up his page and prove that his content is just a jalapeño on the Scoville spice scale. “I guess that’s the proof in the pudding that you can have an OnlyFans page and continue to work in the mainstream, because I have continued to do so.”
OnlyFans was founded a decade ago, and began as a content subscription site with the aim of attracting artists and influencers who could showcase exclusive work for a price. It may be deemed as being primarily for adult content today, but explicit stuff was initially banned for the site. The ban was lifted in 2017. That year, the company’s revenue was reportedly $2.6million. In 2024, it was $7.2billion.
Mitcham spent time looking properly into creators on OnlyFans, and realised just how diverse (and SFW) some content creators are. DJ Khaled set up an account in 2021 for motivational talks. Harry Potter actress Jessie Caave plays with her hair on her account. “That made it easy,” Mitcham says. “I don’t have to share anything that I don’t feel comfortable with simply because that’s what’s expected on the platform, because that’s not the case.”
Another factor that made the decision easy was the sheer demand. “There are loads of people who, you know, want to see a little bit more that other platforms censor,” he says. “I am very comfortable with my body, you know, after decades of working on and building this… I guess you could call it an asset.” He’s careful with his words, perhaps conscious of coming across as arrogant, but it’s true: Mitcham does still have the chiseled pecks and beefy arms of a pro athlete, even 10 years after his retirement. “It just makes complete sense,” he continues. “If people want to see it, if I’ve got it and I’m happy to show it, why would I show it for free when I could monetise it?”
Mitcham was 20 when he won a gold medal in the 10m platform diving event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He had come out as gay several months prior, to “get that out of the way first” so he could “just get on with doing what I was confident at doing” – that is, diving. “It would have played on my mind,” he continues. “I didn’t want the world to get to know me as one thing or have assumptions about me and then for me to then have to come out to the world.”
His diving days may be very, very far in the rearview mirror now, but he still keeps up with what’s happening in that world. He watched the Paris 2024 Olympics with unbridled joy, seeing the number of out LGBTQ+ athletes jump so dramatically from the apparent 10 that were at the 2008 games (there were at least 175 at Paris). “It’s warmed my gay little heart. It’s made my heart sing,” he beams.
Even back in 2008 the response to him coming out was, mercifully, “99.99 per cent overwhelmingly positive and supportive,” both from the diving community, fans of the Olympics and the media. “It was such a beautifully wonderful, positive experience that really moved me and actually influenced how I continued to interact with the public going forward after that,” he gushes. The experience gave him “trust in the public that” his “openness and honesty” were appreciated.
His relationship with the public continued throughout the 2010s with a slew of TV appearances. Most notably, he finished as a runner-up on Dancing With The Stars Australia in 2015. His openness and honesty continued too; he wrote in his 2012 autobiography Twists and Turns about previously being addicted to crystal meth, and has spoken about his recovery from alcoholism, his turbulent childhood and mental health battles. In 2024, he navigated publicly splitting from his husband of four years, Luke Rutherford.
It’s probably why his fans feel like they know him personally. Of course, there’s an abundance of gay men fawning over his cheeky photos – “They love the art of the tease,” he says. “They love the suggestion. They love the sizzle” – but there’s also plenty of women, queer and straight, signing up to his exclusive content.
He answers questions about his general life and career through Q&A sessions. Even the sordid questions he gets asked are mildly so. “The extreme vast majority of people that follow me have been extremely respectful because they respect me as a person,” he says.
“I would never answer anything that I wasn’t comfortable with anyway, but I very rarely get questions that I’m uncomfortable with.” Being able to communicate directly with someone that people have seen on TV for almost two decades feels like a privilege. Most don’t wish to spoil that. “People appreciate having this access to me,” he adds, and “they probably don’t want to jeopardise it and sabotage it by being vulgar.”
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