How Andrew Tate's business made millions - despite sex trafficking charges
A massive cyberhack in late 2024 exposed how the site - which promises to teach followers how to get rich - was still generating huge sums from thousands of subscribers, even with the brothers on house arrest.
Andrew and Tristan Tate arrived in Florida on Thursday as free men after a travel ban in Romania was lifted.
Sky News analysis reveals that even as the Tate brothers were en route to the US in a private plane, the money was pouring in.
In a two-hour window between 12 and 5pm UK time on Thursday, Tate's website reported almost $25,000 (£19,737) in sales of his online courses.
This includes 82 purchases by people in the UK, seven by Romanians and 161 by Americans.
Reviews posted on the website are another indicator of Tate's income. A total of 1,171 reviews were posted for his courses in the past 37 days.
Even if every reviewer opted for the cheapest option - at $49.99 (£40) a month - that's still at least $1,580 (£1,248) coming in a day.
Image: Credit: The Real World
The 2024 hack
Hackers exposed details from almost 800,000 users of The Real World.
The compromised data included more than 300,000 unique email addresses that appeared to belong to people who had been removed from the main database after they stopped paying their subscriptions.
The anonymous hacktivists said The Real World failed to implement basic security protocols. They said they managed to gather data including usernames, emails and chat logs for current and former members.
"Considering how much this platform promotes 'financial intelligence,' it's shocking how little intelligence was put into protecting its users," one hacker reportedly wrote in a message shared online.
Whistleblower sites published the complete dataset, saying that "the logs originate from the platform's 221 public and 395 private chat servers, distributed across a dozen 'campuses'".
Andrew Tate dismissed the hack on X, saying the chats were "public" and questioned whether it could be considered a hack.
But he did not address the exposure of private user data.
The now publicly available messages show how paying users were given access to chatrooms pitched as resources to learn about topics such as self-improvement and fitness, as well as get rich quick ventures including cryptocurrency investing and ecommerce.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 1:10 Andrew Tate attacks 'media spin'
Tate's involvement
Andrew Tate does not appear to have been closely involved in teaching subscribers to The Real World, which started as Hustler's University in 2021.
Instead, the model relies on users who refer to themselves as professors who offer coaching in "18 modern wealth creation methods".
Where Tate has interacted, he has shared motivational content in the macho tone for which he has become known on his public social media channels.
During a live-streamed episode of Tate's Emergency Meeting podcast, the hackers flooded the chatroom with messages and images promoting LGBTQ+ rights and feminist slogans.
Read more:
Who is the self-styled 'king of toxic masculinity'?
Trump leans on Romania to relax restrictions on Tates
What's next for The Real World?
Cybersecurity experts warned that users may now be vulnerable to phishing scams, doxxing, and identity theft. Since the hack, it's unclear if any steps have been made to strengthen The Real World's security.
Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer turned social media entrepreneur, has built an empire by promoting his version of financial independence and self-improvement. However, this hack poses one of the biggest threats to his brand's credibility to date.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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