Cristiano Ronaldo Earns More from Social Media than Football

Cristiano Ronaldo has a huge fan following, that much is obvious, and not just on the pitch, but on social media too. The Juventus star is famous on social media photo sharing app – Instagram. So, it comes as a surprise that Cristiano Ronaldo earns more from being an Instagram influencer than as a footballer.

According to a Hopper HQ study, Cristiano Ronaldo earned a whopping $47.8 million in a year from sponsored Instagram posts alone. The Juventus star has earned the amount from 49 sponsored posts.

34-year-old Ronaldo tops the sports category and on an average received USD 975,000 (approximately Rs 6.9 crores) for each advertised post on Instagram.

According to a report by Goal.com, the annual amount that Ronaldo gets from Juventus, for whom he signed in 2018, is USD 34 million (approximately Rs 242 crores).

Some of the brands that Cristiano Ronaldo represented on Instagram include Nike Football, Six Pad Europe, and Clear Haircare.

Ronaldo is ahead of his sporting arch-rival Lionel Messi, who is second on the list. Messi’s Instagram earning is less than half of Ronaldo. Messi has earned USD 23.3 million (approximately Rs 165 crores) from 36 sponsored posts.

The earnings of Cristiano Ronaldo from sponsored Instagram posts are way higher than other world celebrities including Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Emily Ratajkowski, and Priyanka Chopra.

“Ronaldo is the most followed human on Instagram (with 186 million followers) so companies are paying almost USD 1 million (approximately Rs 7.11 crores) for posts to access his insane reach,” Hopper HQ marketing executive Nicola Cronin was quoted as saying by Business Insider.

Cronin further said that due to Ronaldo’s status as a celebrity and football star, his earnings from Instagram is way ahead from “typical influencer partnerships”, as many of the Juventus star’s posts will be part of wider sponsorship deals like Nike.

On Monday, October 14, Cristiano Ronaldo added another feather to his cap by scoring his 700th career goal for club and country in Portugal’s 2-1 loss to Ukraine in UEFA Euro 202 qualifying.

With his 72nd minute penalty, Ronaldo has joined an elite club of only five other footballers to tally those numbers during their sporting careers, including Gerd Muller, Ferenc Puskas, and Pele.