Football is one of the most popular sports in the world, if not the most popular one. Football teams and football players have armies of fans around the world that regard this sport as a religion. The perfect recipe for becoming a popular footballer is being skilled on the field and having an interesting personality off the pitch.
Today, the popularity of football players has reached unimaginable heights thanks to social media networks and the fact that they can reach out to a lot more people. The two most famous players at this moment are, without a doubt, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
But who is more popular? Is Cristiano Ronaldo indeed better known and more loved as his fans claim? Let's try to figure it out.
Who are their fans?
We already know that Ronaldo and Messi have hundreds of millions of fans around the world. But who are they and where do they come from? This infographic created by a website called Betting-Sites could tell us more about it.
Messi and Ronaldo are best known in South America. This is not a big surprise since Messi was born in Argentina, and Ronaldo was born in Portugal, the country that has a lot in common with Brazil. Thus, it makes sense that 99% of Brazilians know who Ronaldo is and 99% of Argentinians know who Messi is.
On the contrary, they seem to be least popular in the United States. European football is not that popular here, so this is something we expect to see. Nevertheless, Ronaldo is still more important in the US, as 40% of Americans know who he is, opposed to 30% of Americans who know about Lionel Messi.
Worldwide, Ronaldo seems to be the more popular athlete as well. Data shows that 92% of people heard about Ronaldo, compared to 87% who heard about Messi. Moreover, Ronaldo seems to be more popular among women, as 91% of them heard about him whereas 84% know about Messi.
Social media profiles
We live in the age in which social media profiles play an important role in our lives. This is even more true for celebrities who use their social media channels to communicate with fans and promote their sponsors.
By taking another look at the available data, we can see that Cristiano Ronaldo is more successful at this game than Messi. Ronaldo has a total of 319 million followers across the three most popular platforms — Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Messi, on the other hand, has only 181 million followers. This number is still impressive, but it doesn't come close to that of Ronaldo's.
Moreover, Ronaldo's fans seem to be more eager to communicate with him on social media and let him know how much they care. For example, his most popular Instagram post has around 11.3 million likes and 157,000 comments.
By contrast, Messi's most popular Instagram post has 6.4 million likes and 52,000 comments.
Conclusion
After taking a look at the stats, it is safe to say that Cristiano Ronaldo is definitely more popular than Lionel Messi. However, that does not mean that he is the better player as well, which is a topic for another occasion.
It only means that he puts more money, effort, and resources into building his popularity, and this tactic is obviously paying off.
