In recent months, the hack of Ashley Madison, a website that promotes extramarital hookups via slogans such as "Life is short, have an affair," revealed the personal data of as many as 70,000 users in the Denver area.
Has this breach reduced the number of metro-area cheaters? Not according to SeekingArrangement.com, a rival of sorts to Ashley Madison that's devoted to pairing self-proclaimed sugar daddies (and a few sugar mommies) with students and other young people willing to trade companionship for financial support.
A release from the company claims that "the number of Sugar Daddies in the area has increased by 37 percent since last year."
However, the site's numbers also show that Denver's ranking among top sugar daddy cities has fallen since October 2014, when, as we've reported, the Mile High City placed twelfth by Seeking Arrangement's estimate.
How reliable is such data? In the case of Ashley Madison, plenty of questions have been raised about its claims. Note that its hackers say the vast majority of female profiles included on the site were fictional.
Brandon Wade, founder and CEO of Seeking Arrangement, makes an allusion to this situation in a note on his site's home page. It reads: "Unlike other dating websites, it's my commitment to operate our business ethically. This means caring about your privacy, encrypting identifiable data, and never employing fake profiles or software bots. When we say there are more women than men, we guarantee it."
Whatever that means.
In any event, the site's annual sugar daddy study maintains that Austin, Texas, is now the top sugar-daddy city in the country, displacing Atlanta. Here are its estimates for the number of sugar daddies per 1,000 adult males:
1 Austin 23.24As you can see, Denver is currently listed at number fourteen, as opposed to number twelve last year. In 2014, though, the percentage of sugar daddies in Denver was put at 6.54 per 1,000 males — lower than the current 8.97 figure.
2 Atlanta 21.60
3 Las Vegas 19.23
4 Boston 18.25
5 Orlando 18.10
6 Dallas 16.83
7 Vancouver 15.36
8 Tampa 14.59
9 Chicago 14.53
10 San Francisco 14.21
11 Houston 12.64
12 Seattle 10.82
13 Washington 10.72
14 Denver 8.97
15 Portland 7.11
16 Edmonton 6.24
17 Charlotte 5.75
18 Phoenix 5.66
19 Los Angeles 5.48
20 Toronto 5.37
21 San Antonio 5.11
22 San Jose 5.05
23 San Diego 4.73
24 Saskatoon 4.71
25 Victoria 4.67
26 New York 4.52
27 Calgary 4.02
28 Philadelphia 3.98
29 Winnipeg 3.92
30 Ottawa 3.37
Last year, the site provided specific sugar daddy demographics for major cities. Not so this year. Instead, Seeking Arrangement offers a description of the average sugar daddy: a 45-year-old who spends an average of $4,252 per month on his companion.
Oh yeah: From May to June, 39 percent of sugar daddies were married, but that number decreased to 34 percent at the end of August...after the Ashley Madison hack.
Look below to see a Seeking Arrangement video about the latest findings, followed by a new infographic about sugar daddies.
