Students’ fury atad ‘sugar daddy’ dating site
STUDENTS have hit out at a dating website that promises to help pay off their loans by introducing them to a ‘ sugar daddy or sugar mama’.
Five giant billboards are touring colleges promoting RichMeetBeautiful, which has been accused of encouraging prostitution and preying on the financial insecurity of students.
The Norwegian firm has already faced an angry response after a campaign in Paris, when the driver of one of its vehicles was arrested at the Sorbonne for ‘promoting prostitution’.
Now it is seeking to sign up 100,000 British students by the end of the year, with undergraduates at King’s College London among the first targets.
The billboards show a couple locked passionately together. Alongside is a promise of ‘romance, passion, fun’ plus what appears to be a poorly translated offer that it can pay off their ‘study loan’.
Yesterday a second- year history student at King’s – who asked not to be named – reacted with fury at the site.
‘It’s disgusting,’ she said. ‘It should be illegal for these perverts to prey on youngsters like this. University is expensive and I’m in a massive amount of debt. But me and my friends would never turn to prostitu- tion in order to reduce that, and these sorts of websites are tantamount to that. It’s exploitative and wrong.’
The billboard was also seen yesterday at another London college – Regent’s University – and the dating website is said to have the London School of Economics and City of London Law School in its sights.
The company’s chief executive, Sigurd Vedal, said they will take their campaign to at least 12 universities over the next three months.
‘The UK is one of our top five priority markets to enter with mass marketing,’ he said.
‘We are now on the streets with our new campaign targeting students 18 to 26 years old. Our research shows there is a large
demand for sugar dating in the UK.’ The company’s website claims sugar daddies can offer ‘ financial freedom’ and be a mentor.
It says: ‘ Sugardaddies are wealthy, established gentlemen looking for someone beautiful to pamper, spoil and share downtime with.
‘A Sugarbaby is a beautiful young lady who seeks to please her Sugardaddy, sharing his luxury lifestyle. She seeks to learn from him and advance her knowledge about life, business, culture and more – while earning some pocket money to pay off her college tuition or debt.’
There has been no response from London’s authorities, but Paris said it would make the advert ‘disappear from our streets’.