Cristiano Ronaldo Dominates Lionel Messi In Special Category

Cristiano Ronaldo has dominated Lionel Messi in one special category.

Through the course of Ronaldo’s stellar soccer career, He copped the Ballon d’Or award five times in the last decade and started his 2020 with his first hat-trick for Juventus against Cagliari. However, such accomplishments weren’t the ones that made him above his long-time rival Messi.

With an army of almost 400 million followers across all platforms, Ronaldo is the most followed athlete on social media. While this category doesn’t show up in the stats, this unanimously puts “CR7” on top of Messi and all his peers.

Ronaldo’s numbers on Instagram makes him the most followed person on the platform and on the planet. On top of that, his tactical posts generating revenue through a variety of advertising endorsements earns him an estimated £36.36 million ($47.8 million) per annum, The Sportsman reported.

For the record, a whopping 196 million people follow the Portuguese star via Instagram. What’s even more surprising is that the said figure happened to be the combined population of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Belgium or in simpler terms, 2.5% of planet Earth’s human race.

According to a compiled data from LiveFootballTickets.com, last year alone, the Juventus forward boasts 6,403,853 hashtags by users on Instagram. Ronaldo’s totals clearly states that he has dominated Messi who stands second in the said category. Believe it or not, the Argentine is five million hashtags behind but still tallied an impressive 1,209,206.

Apparently, Ronaldo didn’t only surpass Messi but also rules over their soccer peers. In fact, the total number of all the Instagram hashtag mentions of the 28 closest players behind him would only amount to 3,573,875, or marginally over 55% of Ronaldo’s total tally.

While it is good to know that Ronaldo is making quite a living just by posting on instagram, shortly after the end of 2019, Ronaldo’s earnings has reportedly reached an astounding amount as well.

The Portuguese star started the decade as the 13th highest paid athlete in the world with an annual salary of £35.8 million ($46 million). The said amount was the result of Ronaldo’s blockbuster move from Manchester United to Real Madrid. After the Portuguese star reached the top 10 a year later, he has not left it since.

It will be remembered that while at Madrid, Ronaldo was the top paid athlete in 2016 and 2017. His worth increased and reportedly has taken his annual earnings past £76 million ($99 million) a year when he joined Juventus in the summer of 2018.