Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have built huge audiences on social media, with more than 500 million followers combined, thanks to their longstanding role at the top of the world’s most popular sport. The duo have evenly split the last 10 Player of the Year awards, with the other finishing second in all but one year. Their teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona, are the two most successful clubs this decade, winning a combined seven Champions League Finals.
Both players have robust endorsement portfolios, which generate an estimated $47 million annually for Ronaldo and $27 million for Messi. The two drive huge value to their endorsement partners, particularly sports giants Nike and Adidas, via their social media networks. Ronaldo has been affiliated with Nike since 2003 while Messi has been an Adidas man since 2006. Both have “lifetime” deals.
But as a result of their La Liga teams’ sponsorships, Ronaldo and Messi also generate significant value to their own sponsors’ biggest rival through social media. The Swoosh is visible whenever Adidas pitchman Messi posts to his 184 million followers in his Barça uniform, thanks to the club’s deal with Nike. Same goes for Ronaldo and Real Madrid, which has a deal with Adidas, making the three stripes prominent when Nike lifer Ronaldo posts to his 322 million fans. The result: Ronaldo generated $216 million in value for Adidas while Messi produced $111 million for Nike over the past 12 months.
Forbes posted its annual look at the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes this week. Messi ($111 million) and Ronaldo ($108 million) ranked second and third, thanks to hefty playing salaries and their endorsement earnings. As part of the project, Hookit, which tracks sponsorship value in social and digital media, examined the 10 top-paid athletes to track their value on social media.
The global soccer/football icons were a cut above the rest, with Ronaldo ($474 million), Neymar ($207 million) and Messi ($106 million) all generating at least $100 million in value for their sponsors from their own social media accounts. Conor McGregor was next at $36 million from 70 promoted posts, which generated 72 million interactions.
Hookit measured interactions and video views on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from the athletes’ personal social media accounts for posts with hashtags, mentions or images in photos/videos of sponsors. Hookit measures account promotion type and quality and applies market-driven costs per interaction and platform to deliver a dollar value for each post.
Ronaldo posted 263 times in the past year with one of his sponsors promoted. The posts generated 591 million interactions and were worth $1.8 million per post for sponsors like Nike, EA Sports and Herbalife.
Neymar was equally active on social media with 205 promoted posts. They generated 317 million interactions for sponsors like Nike, Gillette and Beats, per Hookit. Messi had 91 promoted posts with 119 million interactions.
LeBron James was the top American athlete with 69 posts creating $30.5 million in value.
Ronaldo and Messi are locked into their deals with Nike and Adidas, and switching sides in the rivalry would be tricky, but Roger Breum, who heads marketing at Hookit, sees the team investments as money well spent. “If you get the right team, you can get 15 athletes driving significant value,” he says.
Of course, it is not cheap to lock up two of the biggest soccer clubs in the world (only Manchester United is on par with Barcelona and Real in its team value). Barcelona signed a new deal with Nike in 2016 worth $180 million a year on average. Real Madrid also banks more than $100 million annually from its pact with Adidas.
Nike and Adidas are locked in a battle for global supremacy in the global soccer market. With the World Cup set to kick off next week, the competition has never been more heated. Nike and Adidas will be aligned with their biggest stars at the world’s biggest sporting event. Ronaldo’s Portugal team is a Nike club while Messi’s Argentina squad is locked into a pact with Adidas.
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The World's 100 Highest-Paid Athletes 2018: Behind The Numbers
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