Cristiano Ronaldo is the first player with 200 million followers

Cristiano Ronaldo finished second behind Lionel Messi in the vote of the FIFA Golden Ball announced last month. Messi now has five awards, while the Portuguese has three. However, in terms of followers on social networks, Messi does not come close to Ronaldo.

Cristiano Ronaldo was the first player to reach 200 million followers of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, according to the Hookit, which observes and evaluates the sport ecosystem in social and digital media. His number of followers is 64% higher than that of Messi, who has no Twitter account. The Portuguese became the first athlete to cross the barrier of 100 million in Facebook in 2014, and today it is the third celebrity to cross the 200 million between the three major platforms, joining Justin Bieber club and Taylor Swift.

200 million Ronaldo constitute 109.7 million on Facebook, on Instagram 49.6 million and 40.7 million in Twitter. 74% of the 41.8 million new followers in 2015 came from Instagram.

The brand Cristiano Ronaldo reflects the huge global appeal of football. Its base on social networks is greater than the combined followers of basketball icon Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Ronaldo has three times more followers than all the players in Major League Baseball together. James is the athlete with the most followers in the United States with 69 million followers, according to the Hookit.

Most of the star followers of Real Madrid comes from America, where it has 13.5% of fans of social networking. The other main countries are France (7.4%), Brazil (6.4%), Mexico (6.2%) and the UK (5%). The audience of your posts on Facebook or Instagram was on average one million interactions in the past six months. A photo on Facebook with her son in November 2014 had over 4.8 million interactions, while his most popular post on Instagram was a birthday thanks this month to 1.7 million Tanned.

The large number of active followers is a huge benefit for sponsorship partners like Nike, Heuer and Herbalife tag. The audience also helps Ronaldo to earn $ 27 million annually out of the fields. It was the third highest paid athlete in the world last year, with total earnings of $ 79.5 million.