MindGeek: Pornhub company sold

MindGeek, the company behind Pornhub and several other erotic portals, has been sold to the Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. Pornhub is one of the world’s most frequently visited websites.

Negative headlines surrounding Pornhub

Pornhub has repeatedly been in the headlines with scandals in recent years. Thus, in 2020 it became known that on the site material can be found that shows minors as well as real sexual assaults. After these facts became known, the two financial companies Mastercard and Visa ended their collaborations with Pornhub, which caused difficulties for MindGeek. As a result, Pornhub’s reins were tightened noticeably: Videos could only be uploaded by verified users and millions of existing content were deleted.

In 2022, however, Pornhub hit the headlines again. It became known that content on the platform was inadequately moderated. As a consequence, the CEO and another manager of MindGeek resigned. At the same time, Pornhub is still one of the most successful websites worldwide across all industries. According to the market research group Similarweb, it recently ranked twelfth in terms of popularity among all existing websites – just ahead of Amazon.

Ethical Capital Partners sees a challenge ahead

The private equity company Ethical Capital Partners from Canada, which has now taken over MindGeek and thus Pornhub, has, according to its own statements, specialized in particularly complex investment objects. It also claims to pursue an ethics-first approach. Against the backdrop of Pornhub’s recent past, it might well be problematic to reconcile the purchase with the aforementioned orientation, although it is admittedly unclear what exactly Ethical Capital Partners understands by this at all. In fact, MindGeek is the company’s first investment. It is not yet known what specific plans it is pursuing with Pornhub. There is also no information about the purchase price.