Cristiano Ronaldo is the Richest Man in Sports
By Ben Sundock
Just a day after celebrating his 32nd birthday, Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the greatest to ever play the game, has been named by Forbes as the highest earning Male Athlete of 2016 to cap off quite a year from the Portuguese winger who also won the Champions League title with Real Madrid, as well as, the Euro 2016 with Portugal, and was named the 2016 FIFA Man of the Year and won his fourth Ballon D’Or.
Forbes calculated that in the 2016 calendar year, CR7 collected a stunning $88 million (€81.7 million) putting him solely on top of the list of athletes in the world and fourth overall on the celebrity top 100. Of the $88 million earned in 12 months, $56 million came from Ronaldo’s salary/winnings while the remaining $32 million came from endorsements.
Closely behind Ronaldo is his greatest rival, Lionel Messi from FC Barcelona, who accumulated $81.5 million. Ronaldo and Messi were the only two soccer players to break the top 20, with the third richest footballer being Neymar Jr. at 21st, making $37.5 million in 2016.
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Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes.com reports that in 2016 alone, Ronaldo generated $176 million in value for his sponsors on social media. He made this money through his 59 endorsed posts to social media over the course of 12 months. You may be asking yourself, how did Ronaldo make this much money from social media?
The answer to that is because of his absurd amount of followers on social media, tallying 215 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Ronaldo has 60% more followers on social media than any other athlete in the world and, his 112 million fans on Facebook is the most of any person in the world.
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Despite all his recent success and the amount of fans he has, Ronaldo has still received criticism from the Madristas, receiving boos and whistles over the last couple of home games following a recent run of poor form.
Hopefully, Ronaldo has busted out of his recent run of poor form, as he scored one and assisted on one in Los Blancos’ 3-0 victory over Real Sociedad last weekend.
Los Blancos, after an unexpected weekend off, will be back in action Saturday as they travel to Osasuna for their 20th La Liga match.