Just a week after the AVN Awards and the Adult Entertainment Expo was hosted in Las Vegas, CNBC has released a Top 10 List of the ‘Most Powerful Players’ in the pornography industry. The list includes some obvious, iconic names, such as freedom of speech advocate Larry Flint, and Manwin’s CEO Fabian Thylmann, and it’s interesting to note that not a single female is on the list. Join us as we review the list ourselves.

 

 

Fabian Thylmann

 

Thylmann is the owner of numerous adult themed websites through the parent company Manwin. Combined they bring in over 16 billion hits a month and is belived to be the most popular websites on the planet.

 

Larry Flynt

 

Larry Flynt runs Larry Flynt Publishing’s and most notably, Hustler Magazine. Flynt has made headlines during his entire career in the Adult industry in instances like his court cases defending the USA’s First Amendment rights and the failed assassination attempt on his life in 1978 which left him paralyzed from the waist down.

 

Derek Hay

 

Derek Hay, aka Ben English is a retired porn star with over 800 credits to his name. In 2000 he started the model agent company LA Direct Models, one of the biggest in the adult industry today. Before starting LA Direct, he worked with The Rolling Stones as a tour manager.

 

Ron Cadwell

 

While many of the worlds leading e-commerce website and businesses stray away from the Adult industry, Cadwell’s company dove right into it. His company CCBill now handles $1 billion dollars worth of transactions yearly.

 

Steven Hirsch

 

In 1984 Hirsch started the company which would become the leader in producing the worlds most in demand adult content, Vivid Entertainment. The company has particularly focused on celebrity sex tapes, some of the most in demand in the world today.

 

Marc Randazza

 

Randazza has a practice that primarily focuses on the areas of First Amendment litigation, adult entertainment, trademark and copyright litigation, and domain name arbitration disputes.He has represented a number of well-known adult entertainment companies.

 

Frank Koretsky

 

Korestsky owns East Coast News and IVD which are by far the largest distribution companies in the porn industry worldwide.

 

Ron Braverman

 

In 1976, Braverman started what is now the worlds leading manufacture of sex toys. It has been described by Los Angeles Magazine as “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys”.

 

Mike South

 

Mike South is an ex performer who now runs a ‘must read’ blog for any industry insider. He was the first to identify patient zero in the industry’s 2012 syphilis outbreak, and led the charge to shut down Porn Wikileaks, a website designed at exposing the real names and lives of porn stars.

 

Peter Acworth

 

He is the founder and CEO of Kink.com, an internet pornography producer that focuses on BDSM and fetish themes, one of the biggest fetishes in the adult industry.