When Cristiano Ronaldo departed Real Madrid and took on a new challenge in Italy with Juventus, the five-time Ballon d’Or/Best FIFA Men’s Player winner incurred a substantial pay cut. Despite that, he remains among the best-paid athletes on the planet, pocketing around $44.5 million per year. Football earnings aside, what is extraordinary though is that Ronaldo actually earns more from paid Instagram posts than from playing soccer at Juventus, according to a Buzz Bingo ranking of the world’s highest earners on the Instagram platform.
Ronaldo’s Instagram appeal and monetization powers are no less extraordinary as his skills on the pitch and he makes an estimated $47.8 million per year only from paid-Instagram posts! Second-placed Lionel Messi makes less than half that but the Argentinian soccer star still pulls in an impressive $23.3 million from Instagram posts each year. David Beckham, Neymar, Ibrhimovic, Ronaldinho and Lewandowski are place from 3rd to 7th places, respectively.
Ronaldo is popularly followed by 187 million followers on Instagram and his enormous appeal and reach mean that companies are willing to dole out enormous sums of money for a slice of the action. The Portuguese player has worked with the likes of Clear Haircare and Nike Football over the years and pockets an estimated $975,000 for each paid-post on his account. A paid-post on Lionel Messi’s Instagram account averages $648,000.
So even if Ronaldo decides to hang up his boots one day sooner than expected for whatever reasons, he does not even need to slog it out on the pitch to still rake in the bucks due to his Instagram reach. Some folks just have it made good.