Forbes Sports Money Index List is out and Guess Who Tops It?
Beating his long-standing rival Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo has topped the Forbes Sports Money Index list and has been named the world’s highest-earning athlete in 2016.
The newest tool of Forbes magazine combines numerous different sources of income and information like a player’s influence across the different parts of the market. The company boasts that their brand new cross-category ranking is the first of its kind.
Ronaldo won Euro 2016 with his country and the Champions League with his club over the course of last year and earned $88 million. He beat the likes of Neymar, LeBron James and Lionel Messi to sit at the top of the list.
The Portuguese attacker turns 32 on Sunday. Well, he definitely has double reason to celebrate now. He is the first footballer ever to attain the status of the world’s best-paid sportsman. Forbes noted that boxer, Floyd Mayweather’s retirement and the injuries that were sustained by Tiger Woods have helped him.
Kurt Badenhausen, an official at Forbes reported that with Mayweather retired and Woods weighed down by injuries, there was an opening at the top. The biggest star of the biggest sport filled the gap across the globe.
He went on to say that this year, the famous football icon Ronaldo is the world’s highest paid athlete Over the past 12 months, he has earned $88 million from endorsements and bonuses in addition to his salary. Since Forbes began tracking athlete earnings in 1990, Ronaldo is just the second team athlete to rank as top-paid. The first one was Michael Jordan.
The Real Madrid contract is worth over $50 million annually in salary as well as bonuses, which runs through 2018. Additionally, as accounted by Forbes, this three-time FIFA Player of the Year is a marketing juggernaut that has earned him a whopping $32 million off the pitch.
Last year, he kicked off a contract extension with Nike worth $13 million a year. Ronaldo endorses other famous brands as well. They include Clear Shampoo, NetEnt (developers of Starburst Slot), Herbalife, Tag Heuer and many more. Moreover, he has his own line of underwear, shoes, shirts, cologne, suits as well as hotels under construction.
With Best FIFA Men’s Player award and Ballon d’Or under his belt yet again, there is no doubt that Ronaldo is a bankable commodity. Ronaldo’s huge social media presence serves as an advantage to the marketers. He has a remarkable 215 million followers across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. To promote a brand, he posted 255 times on social media. According to Hookit, who track sponsorship value in social and digital media, these posts generated $176 million in media value.
According to the study, Ronaldo’s income rose from $80 million in 2015. That’s $7 million a year more than his rival Messi who is in second place. In fact, Ronaldo and Messi are the only two footballers in Forbes’ top 20 list.
The other footballers who made it to the list are Brazil and Barcelona attacker Neymar who is 21st at $37.5 million, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Manchester United forward is placed 23rd at $37.4 million and Gareth Bale, Ronaldo’s club-mate is placed 25th at $35.9 million.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Ronaldo has made it to the Forbes list. In 2013-14, he was paid a total of $73 million from his salaries, bonuses and off-field earnings. In 2014-15, that number rose to $79 million. He also made it to SportsPro’s World’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes list twice, once in 2012 as well as in the following year in 2013. He’s also made it to Time’s annual list of the Most Influential People in the World in 2014. More recently, in June 2016, ESPN named him the Most Famous Athlete in the World.
All of this just proves the popularity of this Portuguese forward and probably why he deserved to top the Forbes’ list in the first place.
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