This is not a real article but a “PR” planted article by the company seekingarrangement.com.
It may be true that a few coeds have sugar daddies but the $ amounts and rankings are all just made up garbage. It is only to drive traffic to their site.
Ashleymadison.com and most of the dating websites are pros at this technique.
Every now and then the curtain is cracked open for a moment and the press will cover someone who is paid to create hundreds of profiles for these sites, just to keep the paying customers coming back.
You’re probably right about that. Culturmap is not exactly at top-tier news agency — kind of like Examiner an Patch, but with fewer pop-up ads.