The show is about Hollywood Sex scandals but has a portion on Porn (and prostitution) with interviews with Seymore Butts, Ron Jeremey, Sharon Mitchell and Briana Banks. In it Adam Glasser (aka Seymore Butts) is quoted as saying the adult industry grosses close to $14 Billion a year, more than NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB combined.  Check schedule for airtimes.

 I doubt 14 billion covers the salaries of the players in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB. Nevermind what the combined sports gross in revenues.

That's just an insult to any sports fan that saying porn makes more than MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL combined. Come one...Seymore Butts should go back to learning basic high school math again. The average salary in the NBA is well over one million dollars. So therefore with NBA salaries alone...Shaq, Kevin Garnett ETC ETC and about 450 other players in the league. You're probably talking one billion dollars, probably even more. This is with a salary cap too. How many porn stars have a "contract" for over one million dollars or even half a million? MY guess would be none, with the exception of Jenna Jameson. Even her I wouldn't give a contract to for a million dollars. I actually heard the correct number on the Man Show last night. Jimmy Kimmel said that the porn industry grosses just fewer than two billion a year. So, if my elementary math is correct, the NBA players ALONE make about what the porn industry does in one year, probably more. That's not to include endorsement deals, front office jobs, arena jobs, coaches, ticket sales, memorabilia...I can keep going, but I think you get the point. I believe that baseball does more than that since there's no salary cap and there's a whole lot more players on each team. I mean gonzo films can be looked at like the minor leagues too. So there's not even a remote comparison with MLB. Not even close!  Football, do you know what players in that league make? Do you realize what Super Bowl Sunday alone brings in? Then there's the NHL. These guys are pro athletes. Nearly anyone can make porn. After doing all the math for these four sports, I'd estimate that MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL make bring in well over 100-200 billion dollars a year. Come on, Seymore Butts doesn't have a clew as to what he's talking about. Anyone who knows sports and heard this guy say this would completely laugh at him and his dumb comment. How many times has this guy nearly gone to prison? He should stick to directing and leave this to the accountants. Radio, Television, Advertising, Science, Computer Technology, Automobiles...Internet, prescription drugs, there’s a lot of industries out there that gross over a billion dollars a year, well over. MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA only occur within North America and mainly the United States. To say that the porn industry makes two billion dollars a year world wide isn't a mind blowing statement. What do illegal drugs do in one year? Think about what the industries listed just above do in a year. Whoop de do! Don't get me wrong...porn rules...that's just a wrong suggestion.

Revenues are much higher than you think, & this article is couple years old....

The Porn business's overall grosses are closer to 15 billion dollars, much of that from ancillary sources such as in-room movies in hotels.  One of the major chains (I forget which one) said that they make more money from in-room adult videos than they do from the mini-bars...

Another big income source for porn is the internet...

But the bigger issue is profitability.  A gonzo film can be produced for as little as $15,000 or less.  A modest sales of 4000 units at a wholesale cost of $15 is $60,000... at a $30 retail that's $120,000.  Then there's secondary sales to pay-per-view internet and cable/satellite.  Additionally, each scene can be recycled numerous times in compilations, and since the talent generally receive no residuals or any kind of a percentage participation, these complitations are profit machines....  take that all into account, and that $15,000 initial investment may have a return of half a million bucks or more after all avenues are taken into account.

So the salaries of NBA or NFL players vs. the salaries of pornstars is really a moot point and not really a valid arguement, and the statement that porn generates more income that all of the major sports combined isn't a ridiculous thing to say.

The lastest gross figures I could find are (billions):

NFL 4.3
NHL 2.1
NBA 2.7
MLB 3.5
Total 12.6

Actually the arguement wasn't that porn stars make more or less then professional athletes, that's a joke, right? The question is whether or not the salaries of American professional athletes is more then the porn industry generates.

The NFL Superbowl - a one day event, is worth several hundred million dollars by itself. Each NFL weekend, from T-shirt sales to TV monies is worth several hundred million dollars and there are what, 19-20 of those?

 Porn is big business, there is no doubt about that. But it doesn't even come close to professional sports in the US.

i believe in order to be fair one has to count certain things and judiciously NOT count others

but conservatively, i think it comes down to comparing some multiple of HUNDRED million dollar$  to some multiple of THOUSAND million dollar$ (a billion) ... arguably they're not comparable (by rough estimate)

I totally agree! Porn only reaches a small part of the U.S. audience. I'd say under five percent. And that may be a stretch too. Fans of MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL come in all ages and sizes. The more I think about this the funnier this statement is. What is Seymore Butts a moron? I can't believe he said that on the E! channel. Think about it. The Yankees team salary last year alone was close to $200 million and the Red Sox were up there too. The two teams salaries alone were well over $300 million. MLB alone can compete with the worldwide porn industry. MLB + NFL + NHL + NBA (everything in them combined) = porn. If you want to compare the porn industry to those four sports we should look at all the foreign leagues too in order to have a fair comparison. What's porn the national past time now???

David,

I completely agree. One last comment. Any "industry" is big money. Whether it's porn or advertising. They all bring in the big bucks because of the thousands of people involved and so and so forth.

This is really just mental masturbation,  since it really has nothing to do with banging pornstars,  but let's look at the NFL just for the fun of it....

6 preseason games (which we shouldn't even count) plus 18 regular season games, plus play offs add another 4 weeks... 28 days of games out of 365 days in a year.  

Now let's look at the superbowl, which you claim generates several hundred million dollars by itself plus the NFL weekends with you also say generates several hundred million dollars... (which I honestly doubt, but since I'm not that motivated to look up the statistics I'll stipulate to).

Now let's also ignore the fact that the NFL doesn't get all those hundred millions of dollars.  They get a contract with the TV networks... how much money is generated by TV commercials is what the NETWORKS get, not the NFL... of course, how much the NFL gets in their contract is dictated by how much money the networks make from selling the games to advertisers, but that's a much smaller figure that what the games generate in dollars.  But like I said, let's ignore that fact and even assume that the "hundreds of millions per game" that you suggest ALL goes to the NFL... well, let's say 200 million per game, a figure I think is MORE than generous for our little discussion (I think it's much, much lower than that, but I'm willing to use your figures).  200 million times 28 games equals 5.6 billion dollars.  And I think I've been more than fair in the numbers I've used.  I mean, the 6 preseason games don't generate anywhere near the money you're claiming for a NFL weekend, and I also don't think that an ordinary weekend will generate 200 million bucks, but I'm willing to use those figures.

Now let's look at the porn industry... this business goes on 24/7, 365 days a year.  10,000 t0 12,000 new titles, conservatively, released each year...  now let's look at the number of xxx-movies viewed as a pay-per-views in hotels around the country at 12.95 per viewing.  Plus let's look at the number of porn sites on the internet collecting between $14.95 and $39.95 per month for a membership.   The figures are staggering when you take a look at the industry as a whole.  It's been estimated that the Hotel Chains alone take in between 4 and 5 billion dollars a year on the in-room viewings, and that figure is probably low.

Not everybody likes sports, but I can't think of many guys who don't like sex... Sex will win every time in a one-on-one contest....

I think that the whole point has been missed.

I do believe what Seymore Butts said is true, but I think that the point was that porno IS as popular and widespread in our culture as professional sports.  I didn't see the E! show, but he has said the same thing on Showtime's "Family Business".

There is still the mistaken impression that less than five percent of the U.S. audience "participates" in the porn industry.  The fact is that this is just a huge myth.  Sunday school teachers, vice officers, grandparents, preachers, judges, executives, research scientists, next-door neighbors, etc., etc., etc. all watch porn.  Even the ones who say they've never seen a porno watch it.  Porn simply could not generate the numbers it does without the willing participation of a huge portion of our population--even the ones who deny they do it.  That was the point.

by porn industry is the amount of money spent by consumers in all things related to explicit sex.  That included dildos, vibrators, sex magazines, video tapes, pay-per-views, internet pay sites, strip clubs, etc.

The figure you cited above only included the direct revenues flow to each individual leagues.  It discounted the auxillary revenues such as sports magazines, sport radios, sport bar, TV ad revenues, equipment sales, non-official merchanise, illegal bettings, college games (the farm teams), etc.  If all these are counted, it would be a lot bigger.