When Cristiano Ronaldo departed Real Madrid and took on a new challenge in Italy with Juventus, the five-time Ballon d’Or/Best FIFA Men’s Player winner incurred a substantial pay cut. Despite that, he remains among the best-paid athletes on the planet, pocketing around $34 million per year.

What is extraordinary, though, is that Ronaldo actually makes more money from paid Instagram posts than from playing soccer at Juventus. That’s according to a Buzz Bingo ranking of the world’s highest earners on the platform.

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Ronaldo’s monetization powers are as extraordinary as his skills on the soccer field and he makes an estimated $47.8 million per year from paid-Instagram posts. Second-placed Lionel Messi makes less than half that but the Argentinian soccer star still pulls in an impressive $23.3 million from Instagram posts each year.

Third place goes to Kendall Jenner who pockets just under $16 million from the platform annually. Interestingly, if you want to be among the top ten Instagram influencers, you generally need to be a soccer player or a member of the Jenner/Kardashian clan. There is an exception, however, and that’s Selena Gomez in sixth.

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Ronaldo has around 187 million followers on Instagram and due to his enormous reach, companies are willing to fork over enormous sums of money for a slice of the action. The Portuguese player has worked with the likes of Clear Haircare and Nike Football over the years and he pockets an estimated $975,000 for each paid-post on his account.

A paid-post on Lionel Messi’s Instagram account averages $648,000 while Kendall Jenner’s would set a company back around $611,000.

Source: Forbes

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