Cristiano Ronaldo was voted FIFA's player of the year each of the past two years and three times overall. He is a goal-scoring machine with 60 or more tallies in each of the past four calendar years. Ronaldo delivers tremendous value for Real Madrid, which ranks as the world's most valuable soccer club at $3.3 billion, and he is richly rewarded by Real with more than $50 million annually in salary and bonuses.
Ronaldo also delivers for his endorsement partners like Nike, Tag Heuer and Herbalife, who benefit from the most far-reaching presence on social media among athletes. Take Ronaldo's work with Tag Heuer. He posted six times on Facebook over two days last year regarding the watch brand's "Don't Crack Under Pressure" ad campaign. The posts were viewed 35 million times with 2.4 million "likes" over two days. The posts generated an estimated value of $380,000 for Tag, according to research firm Repucom. Ronaldo counts 158 million total followers across Facebook,
Ronaldo was the first athlete to rack up 100 million Facebook fans and his current total of 103 million is more than any other person on the planet. He's adding fans at nearly one per second. His most popular Facebook post to date was a photo with his son celebrating Children's Day. It has 4.3 million likes.
The earnings vary widely for the athletes that made the top 100 in Forbes' annual look at the highest-paid people in sports. Boxer Floyd Mayweather leads the way with earnings of $300 million over the last 12 months, and the Houston Rockets James Harden ranks No. 100 at $18.8 million. The same goes for the athlete's social media presence. Sixteen athletes do not have personal accounts on any of the three major social media sites, while seven soccer players have more than 35 million fans.
The 15 soccer players that made the top 100 highest-paid athletes have a cumulative total of 636 million followers, led by Ronaldo, Neymar, Messi, James Rodriguez and Mesut Ozil. The 85 non-soccer players in the top 100 have a combined following of 442 million fans. The graphic below displays circles which reflect the size of an athlete's social media following, and the numbers within the circles are their ranks among the 100 best-paid.
LeBron James, and his 54 million followers, is the only athlete preventing soccer players from sweeping the top of the list. Other NBA stars with a heavy social media presence include Kobe Bryant (30 million followers), Kevin Durant (25 million) and Dwyane Wade (20 million).
Major League Baseball and the National Football League both have global aspirations, but they can't touch soccer and to a lesser extent basketball when it comes to the social media presence of its stars. The worldwide appeal of soccer and basketball create global icons with their best players. Drew Brees has the biggest following of any NFL player, but his 4.4 million fans ranks just 38th of the 100 highest-paid. It is even worse in baseball with David Ortiz topping the charts at 2.9 million, good for No. 44 among the top-paid.
