Jason Sparks is a busy man. Just take a gander at a partial list of his titles: content creator, cam performer, director, editor, studio CEO, entrepreneur and traveler. We’re on the phone to discuss the pending launch of his latest premium membership site, FTMmen.com on the Carnal Plus streaming service — and how Sparks never stops moving.
“I’m a workaholic. I work all the time, but every morning I take a ten-mile bike ride if the weather is cooperating, and go to the gym, so I do get some ‘me’ time,” he says. “Luckily my business partner, who is also my fiancé, does an amazing job and takes a lot of the load off me.”
I’m the original content creator. A lot of people looked down on this. But they’re the same people doing the same now.
Sparks has steadily cranked out content at a blistering pace for the better part of 15 years. He is known for his flagship site, JasonSparksLive, which focuses on exceptionally cute local dudes — scouted from nightclubs, parks and gyms around the country — in hotel room trysts with each other or Sparks or a sprinkling of notable swordsmen.
With a steady stream of updates that has never faltered, it could appear as if Sparks and his very small band of compatriots have simply never left the road. The truth is that he didn’t — literally. Until he shifted production methods four years ago, Sparks traveled and produced content 365 days a year. His possessions were kept in storage and he lived out of a suitcase.
Today, he and his partner own a studio in Atlanta where they also live and produce content for half a dozen paysites — including the nascent FTMmen, which at the time of our phone interview in late summer already had three years of updates banked, focused on three hand-selected newcomers.
He is pleased to emphasize that JockPussy, another notable site he created five years ago, is the only FTM paysite he knows about that updates on a regular schedule. “And now FTMmen will be the second,” he said.
Over the years, Sparks has accumulated all of the skills he needs to launch a niche-focused website designed to cater to a market that he is concurrently expanding and elevating.
Nearly 15 years ago, an adult performer he was dating asked him to step in at the last second and pinch-hit as a co-star. “It was supposed to be a one-time thing,” Sparks recalled with a chuckle. “Obviously, that changed.”
He kept performing and soon called upon a then-untapped reserve of entrepreneurial fortitude to launch a new studio. He began releasing DVDs just as the format was in its final days. “They went away fast,” he recalls. But Sparks was not deterred; he recovered from that stumble with a deft pivot and began traveling and performing live cam shows twice a week.
At the start, clips of his cam shows were posted to the GunzBlazing network — which in a full-circle moment is now part of Carnal Media — and Sparks identified an opportunity. “I picked up a camera and started shooting short clips. That’s how JasonSparksLive was born,” he said. “I kept traveling and shooting with different people.”
Eventually, Sparks realized he’d accumulated a cache of content that didn’t have an appropriate web home.
“I had all this content that just didn’t fit on JasonSparksLive. So I took all of it and started RawFuckBoys,” he said.
At the time of our interview, that original cache of content was just about depleted. True to form, however, Sparks already had a brand refresh on the boards for RawFuckBoys, with months of new content already filmed and ready to go. “It’s very different, a lot edgier with slings and fuck benches and things like that,” he said.
His next major paysite launch would reset Sparks’ career and set up FTMmen.
“I was in Wichita, Kansas about five years ago and I met this guy on Grindr,” he recalled. “We hung out a little bit and I really enjoyed his company. He wanted to do porn and I tried to figure out a place where he could thrive. That’s how we came up with JockPussy and this guy became the star — Luke Hudson.”
Today, Hudson is a popular and notable FTM performer. But until JockPussy was created, there was no other place for him to be featured. “All of the other FTM sites had shut down or they weren’t updating that much,” said Sparks. “I created JockPussy specifically for him and now he’s just signed as an exclusive with Carnal Media.”
Jump-cut a few years later to a span of three weeks when Sparks scouted three promising FTM newcomers, one after the other, and he knew the ascendancy of Hudson and the success of JockPussy had expanded the market for FTM content.
“They are these super, super hot guys that no one has really seen before,” Sparks said. “But JockPussy is all about twinks and jocks and these guys were not twinks or jocks. I thought that maybe the stars were aligning and I should start a second FTM site focused on muscular guys. Usually when you start a new website, you bank a couple months of content in advance. But I spent the first half of this year filming three years’ worth of content. I was filming nonstop for months! I was just so inspired; I had some amazing models.”
Those men are Beaux James, Chance Hart and Jesse Diamond, who Sparks said is one of the only FTM performers with both a penis and a vagina.
“All of them are muscular and fit. These guys are going to be stars,” said Sparks.
FTMmen, along with the launch of an as-yet-unrevealed paysite and several additional forthcoming web properties in 2022 — plus his existing portfolio — will combine to form the basis for Sparks’ own branded streaming service to complement Carnal Plus.
“I’m in a high-growth phase right now,” Sparks quipped.
His studio has recently hired several new staff members to assist with editing, camerawork and office admin and has purchased all-new camera, sound and lighting equipment. Sparks’ inexhaustible work ethic allowed him to ride out the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdown without interruption and double the number of paysites in his network, including FTMmen.
For several decades, he observed, the entire FTM genre was literally just one person: the filmmaker, activist, educator and entrepreneur Buck Angel. Eventually, trans adult powerhouse Grooby began honoring FTM performers with their own category at the Trans Erotica Awards in 2014 and performer-filmmaker Eddie Wood and a scant handful of others further expanded the burgeoning market.
But it was the emergence of Hudson as a pinup that prompted a light-bulb moment for Sparks.
“A lot of the FTM sites before JockPussy cast talent who identified as gender-fluid and marketed to gender-fluid fans and that’s great,” he said. “But the audience you’re serving is still very small. I decided to take a different route and market to gay guys who want to enjoy super-hot men. So I cast super-hot men who just happen to be FTM.”
Sparks understands that marketing content to gay men that is not solely penis-focused requires finesse and patience.
“When I decided to launch JockPussy five years ago, I asked people in the business for their advice. Every single one said it was the worst decision I could make and that I was throwing my money away,” he states. “They said there isn’t enough of a market. And I decided to push back against that attitude; mostly, it was because of Luke because I really like him and I thought he was pretty special. There are more than one or two flavors in the world.”
He admits it was “hard going” at the start. “There wasn’t really a market. We were creating the audience. It took us a good three years to gain traction,” he said. “I considered shutting it down a few times. All of a sudden, maybe two and a half years ago, it really took off.”
Sparks said he now receives around three dozen applications from FTM performers per year.
“One of the other things we’ve found is that about 80% of the [cisgender] guys we cast for JockPussy or FTMmen have never seen a vagina before. I have a shoot coming up with Luke and a couple of twinks and they have never seen a vagina. But they think Luke is hot and they called me and said they wanted to shoot with him.”
Just as he was well ahead of the curve on clips and camming, Sparks can see the adult landscape changing for FTM content and performers.
“Clearly the interest is out there. I just got a message from an FTM guy who is pretty successful on OnlyFans and JustFor.fans. He said, ‘I want to thank you. I’m only able to do this because of JockPussy.’ That makes me feel good because it was a hard slog for a good long time,” Sparks reveals. “Bloggers would not touch JockPussy. They wouldn’t even discuss it! ‘There goes that quirky Jason Sparks, producing an FTM site that’s never going to go anywhere.’ Well, it took a long time to get traction and make it happen.” “I’m the original content creator,” he added. “A lot of people looked down on this. But they’re the same people doing the same now. I haven’t been this excited about a launch in a long time.”
