The rivalry between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi is far beyond the round leather game and the pitch to the social media where the Real Madrid man has now been adjudged the first to hit the 200 million follower mark to get the better of the Barcelona star player.
He might have lost out to Lionel Messi in the race for the Ballon D’Or and his Real Madrid side may be nine points behind Barcelona in La Liga but there’s one area where Cristiano Ronaldo is most definitely light years ahead of his rival – social media.
A report released by HookIt – a company dedicated to monitoring accounts for sports stars and organisations – claims Ronaldo has become the first sportsman in the world to break the 200,000,000-follower mark across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Given Messi has not even registered himself on Twitter as yet, it’s little surprise that the Portuguese is miles in front of the Argentinian, but it’s only when Ronaldo’s reach is compared to other major international figureheads within the global sporting community that the scope of his online presence is truly understood.
According to the HookIt report, Ronaldo has more followers than all the teams and players currently competing in MLS combined and three times more than the entirety of Major League Baseball.
The former Manchester United man accrues an average of 137,000 new followers across social media each day, with more than half of his audience coming via the star’s Facebook page – which currently has close to 107million likes.
Ronaldo’s reach is significantly wider than Messi, whose Facebook and Instagram accounts leave him with less than two-thirds of the Real forward’s tally, while there are few other footballers to rival Ronaldo’s 40.7million-strong Twitter audience.
Neymar has a total of 21.2million followers on the micro-blogging platform, Wayne Rooney has 12.6million and Luis Suarez a little over six million.
In the US, basketball stars Lebron James (28.2million), Kobe Bryant (8.7million) and Michael Jordan (2.6million) are all significantly behind Ronaldo when it comes to Twitter followings, while the frontman has more than double the number of followers than his club side Real (18.3million) and Messi’s team, Barcelona (16.3million).
Ronaldo’s lead over his rivals on Instagram is much narrower, with Neymar boasting 43.4million to the Portuguese’s 49.5million followers, with Messi lagging in third place with a comparatively measly 37.3million.
Messi moves into second place on Facebook with 83.3million likes, as Neymar languishes behind with just over 55million.
Ronaldo still has work to do to beat American singer Taylor Swift, however. Swift’s haul of 71.8million Twitter followers, 67.1million Instagram subscribers and 74.2million Facebook fans puts her more than 13million in front of the footballer.
