Football over the past decade has been dominated by the incredible rivalry that is Cristiano Ronaldo versus Lionel Messi. While the Argentine has won a Ballon d’Or more, Ronaldo has won a major international trophy – something Messi is yet to do.... the comparisons are endless, and the victor very hard to gauge. This is a battle that rages endlessly on, and the good folk at Forbes have brought the one thing that makes the world go round – money – into the equation.
The two were also the highest-paid athletes last year, earning a combined $169 million. When Leo Messi signed the much-heralded contract extension with Adidas – reportedly a lifetime deal – the talk was all about how much he would make in comparison with Ronaldo. While he made $12 million-a-year with his earlier contract while his new contract details have not been divulged. Messi’s only peer, on the other hand, signed his own ‘lifetime’ pact with Nike... that has placed him on par with NBA superstar LeBron James, whose manager said that he earns around about $1 billion. Yeah. A billion.
They are close rivals across the board, except when it comes to social media. The man with the proverbial million-dollar-smile, Ronaldo is miles ahead of his arch-rival in that respect. Sure Messi has a proper congregation following him on various social media platforms – 152 million on Instagram and Facebook put together (Adidas runs his twitter account), which is a way behind Cristiano Ronaldo (who has 260 million) – but the value generated for the brands he endorses is vastly lower than Ronaldo.
Hookit measures the social and digital value of brands and has comprehensively evaluated just how much Messi and Ronaldo make for their brands – Ronaldo generated an immense 500 million for Nike just in 2016, He posted 347 times that year either wearing Nike, showing the Nike logo, or mentioning the name, which in itself had 477 million interactions (likes, shares, or comments). A single Instagram post alone garnered $5.8 million for Nike – this was the one he posted after Portugal won the Euro 2016 Final and had 1.7 million likes and nearly 13,000 comments.
Messi, meanwhile, generated $53 million ‘only’ for Adidas on social media in 2016. This is arguably down to the fact that he posted mentioning Adidas just 213 times, and the same garnered just 65 million interactions. (It may be noted that Hookit also factors in promotion quality to their values in regards to size and clarity).
But what makes it even more insane is the fact that Ronaldo has made just as much for Adidas as Leo Messi.
How, you ask? By wearing Real Madrid! Adidas sponsors Madrid, and any post that has Ronaldo in that famous Los Blancos jersey/practice gear has garnered about $50 million in media value (with 36 promoted posts) with 45 million interactions, per Hookit. In fact, an August training video of Ronaldo on Instagram heavily promoted Adidas and was worth $3.6 million. Messi, however, has been much more restrained when sharing anything with the Nike Swoosh. In fact, he had only two Nike posts in 2016 worth a paltry $830,000.
So that’s $500 million for his own brand + $50 million for the rival brand while Messi made ‘just’ 54 million for both combined – not even close when it comes to pure brand value creation.
