Cristiano Ronaldo makes more money being on Instagram than he does playing soccer for Juventus.
Since 2002, Cristiano Ronaldo has proved to be one of the top figures of football history.
His impressive career will showcase beautiful moments of soccer such as the bicycle kick vs Juventus in Turin, the night of 2016 when Real Madrid finally returned to Champions League glory in San Siro, Milan, his 700th goal of all his career, and mucho more. There is no doubt the Portuguese-born will stand along the likes of Pelé, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff, and many others of the soccer legends.
But there is also an important achievement of Ronaldo, which is turning out to be one of the mosts successful and influential names on Instagram, as a Hopper HQ study published on Buzz Bingo lists the 34-year-old as the platform’s highest earner, taking home $47.8 million from paid Instagram posts alone over the past year.
Business Insider reports that by receiving a reported average of $975,000 per advertised post, Ronaldo’s Instagram earnings far eclipse the world’s biggest celebrities, including Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, Emily Ratajkowski, and Lionel Messi, who earned less than half of Ronaldo’s total with $23.3 million.
“You only need to go on his Instagram to see how many paid partnerships he does outside of the sports market”, said Hopper HQ marketing executive Nicola Cronin to Business Insider, “Ronaldo is the most followed human on Instagram (with 186 million followers) so companies are paying almost $1 million for posts to access his insane reach (…) “Due to his status as a celebrity and football star, his earnings from Instagram break away from typical influencer partnerships, as many of his promotional posts will be part of wider sponsorship deals, such as Nike.
This chart from Statista illustrates Cristiano Ronaldo’s annual Instagram earnings and salary at Juventus during 2019.