Boston: A Sugar Daddy Capital?

(Sugar cubes photo by Brand X Pictures / Thinkstock.)

The term “Sugar Daddy” usually conjures up images of sweaty old men with ridiculous comb-overs lavishing much younger women with credit cards, jewelry and bulk deliveries of Viagra to their pied-à-terre. Think Hugh Heffner or any so-called Hollywood “producer.”

This kind of thing only goes on in those other cities, like L.A. and New York, right?

Well, apparently not. Boston, with its ample supply of old money and wealthy entrepreneurs, is actually the second best spot in the country to snag a sugar daddy, according to data from the matchmaking website SeekingArrangement.com. But don’t get too excited, Boston’s sugar daddies are also among the stingiest.

Using information from his website as well as the U.S. census, former MIT engineering grad Brandon Wade, CEO of SeekingArrangement.com, says that Boston has the second-highest density of Sugar Daddies of any city in the nation, with 2.47 per every 1,000 men age 21 to 84. Only San Francisco has more.

But all those well-heeled men looking for arm-candy are not exactly willing to pay top dollar. On average, says Wade, Boston’s sugar daddies dole out $4,111 a month, or $49,336 a year, in allowance – 17th on his list of cities and a far cry from the $5,710 a month or $68,520 a year that their counterparts in Los Angeles fork over. Boston sugar daddies have an income of nearly $255,000 and a net worth of $4.8 million, a bit less than the national average of an annual income of $263,000 and a net worth of about $5.6 million.

I did some rough math using the 2010 census numbers and discovered that Sugar Daddies in Boston are spending a little more than $30 million a year on what Wade calls their “sugar addiction.” That’s $8 million more than Red Sox slugger Adrian Gonzalez earned for the 2011 season. Even if the economy is in the toilet, it’s not stopping the Sugar Daddies.

As for the man behind the research, Wade stuck around town after graduating from MIT to get an MBA at Sloan. Afterwards, he hit the ground running with an Internet startup and rode the dot-com wave until it crashed. In 2006, he launched his Sugar Daddy matchmaking site.

“This became a passion of mine because of all of the pain I experienced being shy and a nerd and socially awkward with women,” he says. “I sought a solution to my own issues and am a Sugar Daddy. There are lots of guys in Boston just like me so, in a way, I was not surprised to see it ranked No. 2, but still I never would have thought that Boston would be a Sugar Daddy Capital.”

In Boston, says Wade, entrepreneurs and business owners make up 29 percent of sugar daddies, versus 24 percent nationwide. There are also more Sugar Daddies employed doing research and education in Boston than across the country.

“There are so many business owners with a couple of thousand dollars left over at the end of the month in cities like San Francisco and Boston,” says Wade, which he claims helps explain the high density of sugar daddies here.

Also unique is the fact that far more sugar daddies in Boston are married than in other cities, nearly 48 percent versus 41 percent.

“The modern Sugar Daddy is on average 39-years-old, quite wealthy and willing to spoil and pamper the woman he is dating,” says Wade. “The married Sugar Daddy tends to be slightly older and more generous.” Laughing, Wade adds, “You sort of have to pay more for what might be seen as less desirable to the opposite sex.”

But the women are not the only ones to get in on the action. Wade says Boston has more gay sugar daddies than most cities, 5.5 percent as opposed to the national average of 3.8 percent.

Either way you swing, however, who knew that Boston was such a great place for anyone with a sweet tooth?