Major League Baseball and the National Football League both have global aspirations. They diligently schedule regular season games outside the U.S. in hopes of growing international revenue and exposing the game's biggest stars to the world. But if an athlete's social media presence is any indication of its reach, baseball and football stars have a long way to go before they are global athletes.
As part of Forbes' annual look at the world's 100 highest-paid athletes, we examined the social media following for the athletes that made the final cut. We aggregated Facebook fans and
Soccer is the world's sport and the 12 soccer players with a social media presence reflect that. Those 12 collectively have 337 million fans compared to 312 million for athletes in the top 100 across all other sports. Soccer players have the three largest followings on social media and five of the top six.
The Real Madrid star has the biggest social media following among athletes.
Cristiano Ronaldo finished second behind Floyd Mayweather as the top paid athlete, but no sports figure can touch the Real Madrid and Portugal star when it comes to social media. Ronaldo, who won the Ballon d'Or in January as the sport's most valuable player for the 2012-13 season, had 83.4 million Facebook fans as of last week, fourth highest in the world, behind only one-name musicians Shakira, Eminem and Rihanna. World Cup fever is on the loose and Ronaldo's social following is climbing even higher with almost 85 million Facebook fans as of today. The story is the same on Twitter where Ronaldo has the biggest following among athletes at 26.4 million for a combined total of 110 million. Fellow global soccer stars, Lionel Messi and Neymar, have the next biggest social followings among athletes with 57 million fans (Messi, who is not on Twitter) and Neymar (34 million).
LeBron James leads a group of 18 basketball players that collectively have 154 million fans. James ranks fourth among athletes with his social following and is the only non-soccer player in the top six. James worked with consulting firm Sapient to help manage his online message and following. The partnership has been a slam dunk as James developed one of the strongest online presences. The only time you won't see James online is during the NBA playoffs when he institutes a social media blackout.
You have to scroll down to Drew Brees to find your first NFL player. Brees has 3.8 million fans, which ranks 36th among the 100 highest-paid and the combined presence for the 13 NFLers is 9.3 million. Derek Jeter is the first baseball player and his 2.3 million Facebook fans is good for No. 41 among athletes. The 20 baseball players have a cumulative following of 12.8 million. There are 16 athletes within the top 100 that are not on Facebook or Twitter.
Infographic by Nina Gould; Research by Nicole Minassian
