Heading into the FIFA World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo has been named as the most marketable footballer in the world cup. Lionel Messi comes close second but Ronaldo’s recent success and good looks makes him untouchable in terms of his brand value and marketability. The figures are arranged by company called “Repucom” who keep an eye on around 5000 celeb’s branding which of course include high profile footballers as well.
They take things like global awarness and social media presense into the account to build a DBI score. Accordinbg to Repucom, around 83% people are aware of Ronaldo while he has the most followers on social sites combned totaly around 108 million. Lets take a look at top 10 most marketable athletes in the world.
| NO# | PLAYERS | DDI Score | Global Awarness | ||
| 1 | Cristiano Ronaldo | 79.74 | 83.87% | 82m | 29m |
| 2 | Lionel Messi | 75.87 | 76% | 57m | 2m |
| 3 | Gerard Pique | 62.90 | 58% | 12m | 8m |
| 4 | Fernando Torres | 61.79 | 59% | 3m | 2m |
| 5 | Wayne Rooney | 59.47 | 55.86% | 20m | 9m |
| 6 | Andreas Iniesta | 59.25 | 52.80% | 18m | 8m |
| 7 | Neymar | 59.37 | 53.33% | 22m | 11m |
| 8 | Iker Casillas | 59.09 | 49.43% | 18m | 1m |
| 9 | Zlatan Ibrahimovic | 59.07 | 55.10% | 15m | 1m |
| 10 | Thierry Henry | 57.80 | 51.30% | 16m | 300k |
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Ronaldo who has massive following on social media (82m facebook likes nad 28m twitter followers) making him one of the most followed athlete online, he was also the “trend setter” in the last 12 months. Won the Fifa Ballon d’or award for the 2nd time, almost single handedly guided Portugal to World Cup with that famous hattrick against Sweden and won the Champions League and Copa Del Rey.
Apart from all that he can also be seen in many adverts around the world, most notably he is the key figure of Nike world cup campaigns and that supermodel girlfriend plays its part as well.
Lionel Messi has struggle in the last year on the pitch but he lead Adidas advert campaigns alongside other notable names. personaly I dont think the statistics above reflect the reality of this aspect. Ronaldo and Messi are the most marketable footballers but this global awarness stuff is just made up by this company. Anyway who you think should be in the top 10 most marketable list and whats your thoughts on it ?