Pam & Tommy: What Happened To Internet Entertainment Group
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Pam & Tommy.
Internet Entertainment Group acts as a death knell to the titular couple's relationship in Pam & Tommy, but what happened to IEG in real life? First released on February 2nd, 2022, Pam & Tommy depicts the rollercoaster marriage of Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) and the release of their infamous unauthorized sex tape. Pam & Tommy has drawn widespread critical acclaim, with the Hulu series garnering particular praise for leading pair James and Stan for their dead-ringer performances as the iconic 90's couple and its insistence on staying close to real-life events.
The Pam & Tommy season 1 finale, "Seattle," ends dramatically, with Anderson and Lee struggling to shake off the effects of their sex tape in their respective careers before eventually divorcing. Much of Pam & Tommy's eighth episode centers on the couple's legal battle against Seth Warshavsky (Fred Hechinger), the founder of Internet Entertainment Group, or IEG. IEG's flagship website in 1997 was the infamous Clublove.com, which streamed Anderson and Lee's sex tape for free using cutting-edge technology at the time.
While the Internet Entertainment Group portrayed in Pam & Tommy appears at the peak of its powers, founder Seth Warshavsky's dot com bubble quickly burst after the turn of the millennium. Warshavsky's IEG became embroiled in several lengthy legal battles from 1996 onwards, including the salacious events depicted in Hulu's Pam & Tommy. As a result, here's what happened to Internet Entertainment Group after Pam & Tommy's story.
Contrary to its seedy origins as a Seattle-based phone sex operation, Seth Warshavsky's IEG was instrumental in the early days of monetizing the internet. IEG's flagship website, Clublove.com, was essentially a live streaming peep show and the first of its kind to receive widespread recognition. This led to Warshavsky being featured on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine as one of the 50 original pioneers of the internet. At IEG's peak, Warshavsky claimed to have 100,000 subscribers and $100 million in annual revenue, making him the eminent face of the online pornography industry at the time.
This wealthy version of Seth Warshavsky and IEG is the proposition Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee are forced to contend with in Pam & Tommy, with the couple bullied by Warshavsky for the rights to their tape. Yet in real life, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's lawsuit was one of several brought against IEG in the late 1990s that ended in the dissolution of the company. At the time, IEG was also being made to sweat by Hasbro in 1996 over using the domain name "Candyland" before being forced to battle Poison frontman Brett Michaels and actor Kelsey Grammer just two years later over other sex video scandals.
These battles pushed IEG to its financial limits despite Warshavsky's posturing over the company's annual revenue numbers. Although Anderson and Lee's $90 million copyright-infringement lawsuit against IEG was initially dismissed in 1998, the pair were awarded a $1.5 million judgment plus court costs and attorney fees in December 2002 after years of appeals. This led to IEG's collapse, with founder Warshavsky fleeing the country before the judgment award in 2001. While Anderson and Lee were unable to keep their sex tape out of the public domain thanks to Warshavsky's actions, the real-life pair did receive justice via their settlement in a much more just turn of events than the ending granted to Pam & Tommy audiences.
Source: Screenrant
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