Cristiano Ronaldo charges more money per post on Instagram than any other athlete in the world, according to Social media specialists Hopper HQ. CR7 tops the list of which eight of the top ten earning athletes are footballers, demonstrating the dominance of their presence and influence on social media.
Just last month Forbes announced that Leo Messi was the highest earning athlete in the last year, but it's Ronaldo with his 176 million followers who is estimated to charge the most money (nearly $1 million per post) for a sponsored Instagram post. If you follow Ronaldo on Insta you'll know that nearly all of his posts are sponsored; when he's not trying to flog his own pants or hotels he's posting paid-for-ads with the likes of Herbalife, Clear Shampoo, Nike and pretty much anything that comes out of Dubai. Check out the full list below, which includes the amount of followers each athlete has and the price they can demand per post.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo (football), 176 million, $975,000 USD
2. Neymar Jr (football), 123 million, $722,000 USD
3. Lionel Messi (football), 126.5 million, $648,000 USD
4. David Beckham (football), 57.5 million, $357,000 USD
5. LeBron James (basketball), 50.7 million, $272,000 USD
6. Ronaldinho (football), 47 million, $256,000 USD
7. Gareth Bale (football), 40.5 million, $218,000 USD
8. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (football), 36.8 million, $200,000 USD
9. Virat Kohli (cricket), 36 million, $196,000 USD
10. Luis Suarez (football), 33.8 million, $184,000 USD
11. Conor McGregor (MMA), 39 million, $169,000 USD
12. Mohamed Salah, 30.5 million, $165,000 USD
13. Stephen Curry (basketball), 26 million, $142,000 USD
14. Floyd Mayweather (boxing), 22.7 million, $124,000 USD
15. Ronda Rousey (WWE), 12.5 million, $67,000 USD
16. Serena Williams (tennis), 11 million, $60,500 USD
Decent work, if you can get it. Yeah, we'd be flogging any old sh*t too for those prices.
