Record number of Australian students turning to rich Sugar Daddies to fund their lifestyles
FROM lonely millionaires and busy bankers to sports stars and politicians, the number of Australian students signing up to be a man’s “sugar baby” is soaring to new heights.
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ELLE was just 16 when she heard about the Sugar Baby concept and thought it was too good to be true.
Six years later and she has received a weekly allowance from a time-poor state minister and partnered a well-known casino high roller, dined with war veterans and has had paid-for holidays, funded one university degree, started a second and now is opening her own floral business.
“I have seen people who have been aged in their 60s and 70s actually which was strange because I didn’t think I could relate to people that age but I actually did,” the 22-year-old former Brisbane girl now studying and working in Melbourne said.
She is one of 125,000 university students who have signed up for “arrangements” in the murky world of Sugar Daddy-Sugar Babies, where rich but time poor men pay weekly allowances to young students for companionship and relationship in a burgeoning untaxed industry worth tens of millions of dollars.
According to one leading Sugar Baby business, Seeking Arrangement, the number of students looking to “date” older rich men had grown 25 per cent in the past year with 183 students from Griffith University alone allegedly signing up just in 2017.
Melbourne University saw 138 new Sugar Babies on the program last year while Sydney University attracted 111 members, to now have 436 Sugar babes on campus.
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has the third most Sugar Baby students registering nationally with 406 members after Sydney and Griffith with 475 students. Macquarie and Monash universities are also well represented on membership files as is the University of Newcastle.
News Corp Australia spoke with Sugar Babies from across Australia, most of whom were aged in their 20s, bored with the dating scene, materialistic and happy to satisfy the fantasies of men, some of whom are married, in exchange for average monthly allowances of up to $2800, luxury goods and holidays.
Others are poor students, struggling to meet fees and costs of college life or city-living and looking to supplement their part-time work wages.
In the fast-paced 21st century world of Tinder and a slew of other dating apps, it’s seen as just a job or dating game with mutual benefits and few strings attached.
Amanda who is studying for her Masters in business in renewable energy said being a Sugar Baby was not like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
“Julia Roberts was more of an escort in that movie where I would put myself in the shoes of someone who is looking for an experience, a very different experience but a safe and fun one and one I can go back on and go ‘it was actually something I enjoyed and was good’,” she said.
“I’m a student and I work and do the usual things, you’ve probably walked passed one hundred thousand of us students that have that rigid lifestyle.
“I just wanted to experience something a little different and more memorable.”
She only joined last April after being curious but within a month had entered her first arrangement with a 40-year-old finance worker.
“He didn’t have much time generally which is understandable so when we did meet it was very scheduled but quite natural,” she said.
“We’d meet once or twice a week and spend time together and sometimes go on holidays together for a few days, we went up to Queensland for a weekend and that’s how it went for the months we were together.
“When we first started it was an allowance, then we got to know each other then it became gifts. Gifts, bags, practical ones like he’d go ‘we are going on holiday so I will get you this bag’, jewellery, a lot of jewellery because I like jewellery, a lot of clothing as well and around the time we parted ways it was near my birthday so I got birthday gifts as well.”
The arrangement involves sex but not always, just when both parties feel like it.
And parameters can be set by both Sugar Babies and Daddies on age, type, fetishes, money willing to pay and even breast size and hair colour.
“I think a lot of girls I know would like to do it because it is just such easy money,” Elle said.
“I think the men that go on there are a very particular man they are very type A personality, business focused and they just don’t have the time, they have the funds but not the time to see people so this is a good medium for them to get those things they want.
“I think the girls honestly, well for me and other girls I know who use the site they want materialistic things, that they can’t afford themselves like a designer bag so they will find somebody who can.”
Elle had a long-term arrangement with a well known poker player who lived next door to Crown Casino and would be by his side all night as he played and earlier with a Victorian State Minister when she was 19.
“I didn’t know much about him, I deliberately tried to not look him up because I didn’t want to see him for his job,” she said of the minister.
“He didn’t want that, everybody knows who he is and everybody knows what he says in public so I thought it would be nice for him to not have somebody who just sees him for that …. I’ve been lucky with the (sugar daddies) I’ve met, most of them have been regular working guys who don’t have time to really see people or they travel a lot.
“I would go out to dinner with them or just hang out with them, go into the city or a park.”
But it’s not all cash and roses. She had to be rescued by a friend once after her arrangement took her on a long drive to his house out of the CBD and wouldn’t let her go while another, a music producer, was a meth addict.
There have been others too that just insisted on fast sex in a hotel.
“I want it to feel somewhat real with these people, I want to have a real connection with them and a lot of businessmen on there who just want sex with somebody and throw lots of cash at them,” she said.
Rose, 26, from South Australia, is seeing a 35-year-old Australian businessman while she finishes a Masters in International Relations at Flinders University.
Her sugar daddy gives her an allowance of $1000 per week that helps pay for her rent, food, electricity and water. When they go out to dinner or a business function he pays for her clothes, high heels and jewellery in exchange, she sees him two days a week.
Rose, originally from Ghana, said her family knows what she does and while her father pays for her studies her Sugar Daddy pays her to be a princess.
“He wants an arrangement with no strings attached. He doesn’t want a serious girlfriend,” she said.
Originally published as Record number of Australian students turning to rich Sugar Daddies to fund their lifestyles