He didn’t win the Ballon d’Or and Real Madrid are nine points behind Barcelona in La Liga, but Cristiano Ronaldo has pipped Lionel Messi to the line in one contest – social media.
Ronaldo has become the first sportsman to hit 200,000,000 followers across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram according to social media monitoring company HookIt.
The Madrid star is not only leaving Messi light years behind (the Barca star isn’t on Twitter), but also a number of major international figureheads within the global sporting community.
He has more followers than all teams and players in Major League Soccer and three times more than Major League Baseball.
137,000 new followers everyday contributes to Ronaldo’s Facebook following of 107 million likes, 40.7 million followers on Twitter and 49.5 million on Instagram.
Messi has 83.3 million Facebook likes while Neymar is lagging behind on 55 million and 21.2 million Twitter followers.
Wayne Rooney has 12.6 million followers on Twitter, Luis Suarez has just over six million, while Ronaldo also eclipses basketball stars Lebron James (28.2 million), Kobe Bryant (8.7 million) and Michael Jordan (2.6 million).
The forward has move than double Real Madrid’s 18.3 million and Barcelona’s 16.3 million following.
However, Ronaldo has ground to make up to get Taylor Swift’s level. The American singer has 71.8 million Twitter followers, 67.1 million Instagram followers and 74.2 million Facebook likes – a total of 13 million more than the footballer.
Source: FOX SPORTS
