Forbes / United States: Cristiano Ronaldo is the biggest star in the biggest sport on the planet, and he’s paid handsomely for being so. In the last 12 months he earned $88 million to rank as the world’s highest paid athlete, the first footballer to do so.
That is quite a living for playing a kid’s game. It’s enough to split up among an entire soccer team, with money leftover to pay their opponent’s team too. But still, Ronaldo may be underpaid.
To clarify, he is fairly compensated for his work on the pitch. The two-footed strikermade $56 million in salary and bonus from Real Madrid, the most valuable soccer club in the world worth $3.6 billion. He is contracted to make over $50 million through the 2017-2018 season. That is the going rate for being soccer’s best player right now, or at least Real’s all-time leading scorer who has racked up more than 50 goals in each of his last six seasons, who won the Champions League for his club last month, their second in three years, when he kicked a decisive penalty kick, and who has three FIFA best player of the year awards and four European Golden Shoes in his personal trophy case.
Just look at what his rival Lionel Messi, the second highest paid athlete in the world with $81.4 million, makes from his club for comparison. The record-holding five time FIFA best player of the year got paid $53.4 million from Barcelona, the second most valuable in the world worth $3.5 billion. The negligible difference between these soccer superstars 7-figure weekly pay stubs shows basic economics are at work: the two best footballers in the world make the two highest salaries on the pitch from the two richest billion-dollar clubs in the world.
Evidence exists though that Ronaldo is being slighted off the pitch.
The 31-year old with poster boy good looks and a chiseled physique makes $32 million as a human billboard for a global portfolio of sponsors including: Nike, Tag Heuer, Clear men’s hair products, Roc headphones, Herbalife , PokerStars, his personal line of CR7 underwear, shirts, shoes, and namesake fragrance, suits and hotels (under construction). It is hard to find another athlete, or celebrity, with their name or face associated to as many products; and still there is no sign he has reached the point of saturating the market with his image. Just last summer Singapore billionaire Peter Lim’s Mint Media purchased Ronaldo’s image rights in an estimated $40 million, 6-year deal and with a goal to grow his brand in Asia.
Sure, Ronaldo made more in endorsements than 89 other athletes did on our list of the world’s highest paid, and more than the total earnings (salary, bonus, and endorsements) of 67 of them. But he should have — and then some. He is the second-highest ranked active athlete in terms of influence in the world, according to The Marketing Arm’s global celebrity index powered by Repucom – one behind Messi. He is also the most popular athlete in the world by social media standards, with 215 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – 60% more than any other athlete.
Plus the Portuguese-born star generated $176 million in earned media value, per Hookit, which tracks sponsorship value in social and digital media. His 255 branded posts produced an average 651,778 interactions (likes, shares, comments or retweets), and each was worth $689,426. Continuing with the theme where Ronaldo is concerned, this is better than any other athlete.
No one else even came close. In fact, the other 99 athletes on our highest-paid list generated $195 million combined for their sponsors. Two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors ranked a very distant second generating $23.6 million (one-seventh what Ronaldo did) for his sponsors promoting to his 22 million followers (one-tenth of Ronaldo’s). His 219 branded posts averaged 95,780 interactions and each was worth $107,754.
All told Ronaldo generated a 449% return for his sponsors through social media, before considering television, print and other media, in exchange for the $32 million he pocketed from them, making him the best bang for a sponsor’s buck of any athlete on our list. That’s great for big business.
But it suggests that Ronaldo is due for a raise, especially compared to the seven athletes who make more in endorsements than him.
Roger Federer earned the most among athletes as a pitchman, banking $60 million from his sponsors on his way to making $67.8 million as the highest paid individual sport athlete on our list. LeBron James was right behind him earning $54 million off the court, plus another $23.2 million from the Cleveland Cavaliers to rank No. 3 among athletes in the world with $77.2 million total earnings. As seen in the chart below, none of them come close to providing Ronaldo-like value on social media.
It’s particularly interesting to compare how these athletes do promoting their shoe sponsors, typically their largest partner, and in this case Nike. The iconic brand invests heavily in athlete endorsements; it has relationships with half of our top 100 athletes, Federer, James and Ronaldo among them, and realized $57 million in media value from these stars over the last 12 months. But Ronaldo worked the hardest for them — four times as hard as the tennis or hoops stars — and generated 63% ($36 million) of that value for the brand. Yet James, who only produced $2.1 million in social media value, is the one with a lifetime shoe deal, and Federer, who produced half of that, playing in a sport with one-third the audience as the global powerhouse that is soccer, matches what Ronaldo earns from the Swoosh.
