Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have millions of fans worldwide. They are without a doubt the two best footballers of their generation while playing the most popular sport on the planet.
If you want to learn the most interesting stats from the careers of these two superstars, check out the BettingSites infographic below.
There are many opinions as to who is a better player, and both sides have pretty good arguments. But who is more loved and who has more fans?
Naturally, Messi is more popular in his home country of Argentina, just like almost everyone from Portugal loves Ronaldo.
However, people from around the world seem to be more familiar with Ronaldo than with his biggest rival. When asked, 92% of people from all over the world said that they knew who Cristiano Ronaldo was, while only 87% knew about Lionel Messi.
Cristiano Ronaldo is more popular among women, while people aged above 55 prefer Messi.
When it comes to social media activity, Ronaldo has more followers on all major platforms like Instagram and Facebook. The Portuguese player has around 35 million more followers than the Argentinian on Instagram. He also has about 125 million fans on Facebook, compared to 90 million that Messi has.
To put things into perspective, Ronaldo and Messi each have more followers on social media than NBA stars LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant combined.
Because he’s more interactive on social media, Ronaldo has a slightly higher income from brands. Ronaldo generated $35 million from sponsors in 2017, while Messi’s endorsements brought him $28 million in 2016.
Ronaldo also has higher ROI for brands on social media. Nike estimates that his pages are worth $500 million a year to the company, 10 times more than Messi brings to Adidas.
Ronaldo has more sponsor branded posts as well. He posted around 580 of them so far, while Messi used such posts only 146 times.
So yes, while these two football superstars are both extremely popular, it seems that Ronaldo does have more fans in general.
For more information, check out the infographic below.
