The World Sex Championship: What Happened, Where Things Stand

COSTA DEL SOL, Spain—The first World Sex Championship, presented by the Swedish Sex Federation and LiveSexHouse.com, came to an early end last week as rumors flew on social media about lack of payment, illness, injuries and general disorganization.  Despite the apparent tumult that unfolded during the event, which began March 5, it did conclude with a proper—if ahead-of-schedule—closing ceremony announcing the winners. In a live broadcast the evening of Tuesday, March 26 on LiveSexHouse.com, the Female and Male World Sex Champions were respectively declared as Nausi Love of Sweden and Capitano Eric of Italy. The competition was cut short that day (it was originally slated to run until April 5) due to a number of factors, most significantly the sudden withdrawal of its financial backers. Swedish Sex Federation president Dragan Bratic, along with participant Marcus London, addressed this turn of events in a video statement posted to the Live Sex House X feed earlier the same day.  In the video, London explained on Bratic's behalf that "there was an issue that occurred and it wasn't the company's fault—they had a secondary investor that was filling in the blanks with some other money that would have been money that would have been coming to us, and that particular individual pulled out in the middle of the production and the project itself. Now that caused a massive issue, and we were immediately informed of our situation, and we chose to stay to finish the competition so that we could make money on the back end of the competition, and of course on the content that we had made as a group here within the competition itself." He added, "Just so you know, the company is real, they're not scamming people. ... Unfortunately, we had a slight situation where the company had a money flow issue, no fault of their own, this was an outside situation, and it could happen to any company at any point. So I, in my personal opinion, don't hold the company responsible for this situation ... I'm very happy to have come here, met Dragan, and everyone's been very much aboveboard." This statement came a day after competitor Jermaine Lavender began posting a series of inflammatory allegations to X against Bratic and the production. In one of the first of these posts, he wrote above a picture of Bratic: "This guy is an international sex criminal. He got about 16 of us sex workers to fly to Malaga, Spain and after 3 weeks of sex work tells us there's no money to pay us and we must do more sex work to save his 'company'. The whole Live Sex House thing is a criminal scam." In a later post he called the production "a sex trafficking operation." Bratic and London, however, allege both in their statement and in videos Lavender posted to his own X feed that he was doing drugs during the competition, which was a clear violation of his contract. "There was some bad apples, people that were doing drugs or drinking, which is in the contract as a red card and you will be disqualified and removed from the house immediately," London explained in the statement. "One in particular has kicked up a massive firestorm online trying to say that we were being sex trafficked. Now obviously, that is not the case and no way could it be. Now, his grounds for these particular claims is the fact that we haven't been paid as yet—now remember, this wasn't supposed to end 'til the 5th of April anyway, so we wouldn't have been paid until that date, and we're not even at that date now." That notwithstanding, as mentioned above, there were other factors at play that led to the early closing of the competition. Coralyn Jewel, who served as the event's "host" for most of its duration, told AVN that she called for it to be shut down before any controversy erupted.  "I said to them, 'We gotta end this early,'" she recounted in a phone call from Spain. "A lot of people were sick in the house. Cindy [Crawford] broke her arm while she was there, Victoria [Peaks] broke out in a rash, Marcus London pulled a groin, and we had four competitors that were sick with the flu. So I had to actually quarantine the four competitors into a room, and I stood up to [Bratic] and I said, 'No way, Dragan, those four are not competing. Enough, now. Because they're gonna continue to pass this sickness around. And so I said, 'Let's end this early, let's crown a winner, let's get us home safely, and then get us paid. And you can monetize the content and pay us on the backend.'" In regard to how Crawford broke her arm, Jewel disclosed, "She fell down the stairs in the morning. And so she ended up going to the hospital, and Victoria went to the hospital at the same time with her. Then both girls came back and still competed that same day." Jewel also noted that she recruited several performers for the production—including London, Lavender and Peaks—after two early contestants dropped out. In addition, she revealed that due to reports of poor conditions and payment problems at Bratic's European Sex Championship, which took place last June in Sweden, she made several upfront demands before signing onto the project. "I was like, because of that, and because I'm gonna be coming from the United States, I want my roundtrip ticket paid for, I want any of the United States contestants, their roundtrip tickets paid for, because we need that at customs, I want to be able to have the ability to make our tickets changeable, and I want 20 percent of my pay upfront before I even leave my home," she outlined. "So they did that. And when I got here, they picked me up from the airport, everything was fine. They took me to the villa, and then the contestants started coming." When things took a turn, she reported, was approximately 20 days into the competition, when she was informed that the investors had pulled out. Enlisting London to help strategize ways to salvage the situation, the two called a meeting with all the competitors. "I pulled Jermaine aside, because I know him well," she recalled, "and I said, 'Jermaine, listen to me very carefully ... nobody else knows this but I'm telling you before we tell them, because I know you have a temper. I need you to work as a team with us and I need you to shut your mouth, because the only way that any of us are gonna get out of this safe and get home safely and hopefully get paid at some point is if you can keep calm. And he blew up down there. Just blew up. And so ruined it for all of us." She continued: "And then he became very, very violent, and was running around the house taking pictures, covering the cameras, and I said to them, 'You guys gotta call the police,' and Dragan's like, 'We're not calling the police.' And I'm like, 'You have to call the police, he's gonna get more violent,' and they wouldn't listen. So I said, 'I'm leaving.' So I packed my bags and I left. And I told every competitor, 'I'm leaving, I'm going to get a hotel in town, you can all come with me or you can stay, but I'm getting the hell out of here because I know Jermaine well.' And as you can see, he blew everything up on the internet." In another March 25 X post by Lavender, he relayed, "Just so you guys know, I'm fine. The cops came and asked me nicely to leave the property. I did so while telling them about this operation. I'm currently at a small hotel ... I'll be here communicating with the @USembassyMadrid." Contacted by AVN for a response to the various claims about his behavior said to have led to his removal from the villa, Lavender asserted, "The only 'drugs' I was using [was] cannabis. The production team knew about it. They even got me a joint early in the project and took me to the cannabis shop after finding out we weren't getting paid."  He added, "I never became violent. No one in the house did. I was visibly upset and I did raise my voice but was never violent or even threatening." Lavender also made his own response video to the one released by Bratic and London, posted here. Another American competitor, Karlee Paige, started a GoFundMe campaign March 26 titled "Job gone wrong, stranded in Spain, get me home" and seeking a goal of $2,500. In the campaign notes, she wrote: "I am an adult performer. Several others from around the world were flown to Spain for a World Sex Championship. The employer is livesexhouse.com. They flew us here and made us have sex every day on camera and told us after a couple weeks they actually have no money and can't pay us or buy our flights home. They are still continuing to live stream and record us after telling us we are no longer being paid. Some of us are stranded. I as a mother would like to get home before Easter to spend the holiday with my kids. I need help." Where things will progress from this point is unclear, but Bratic has maintained a posture that the World Sex Championship was a success despite its setbacks, and that there will be another competition in the future. Jewel, for one, is adamant that no such thing should be allowed to pass. "He can never get away with doing this again," she contended. "He can't do this ever again." In agreement is Žiga Sedevčič, the president of Slovenian sex worker organization Dobra Družba, who helped recruit competitors and served as a judge for last summer's European Sex Championship.  In a statement to AVN, Sedevčič said that based upon the negative experience he and many of the competitors had with that event, "we advised against participation to everyone who inquired about joining the World Sex Championship. ... From the psychological profiling of the organizer, I can conclude that the main issue is related to money. The organization evidently embarked on the project with insufficient funds to cover the costs and per diems for the participants. It is truly regrettable that the organizers did not heed the mistakes from the previous year, as technical difficulties emerged once again at the start this year. Clearly, the organizer is neither organizationally nor financially capable of conducting such a large-scale event at an appropriate level." AVN reached out to Marcus London to request any information he may be able to procure about what plans are in place, if any, to arrange payment for the World Sex Championship participants. We have not yet received a reply. Michael McGrady Jr contributed to this report.