Portuguese football legend Cristiano Ronaldo is still on track to become the first billionaire footballer in the world in dollars despite suffering a pay cut from his club side Juventus worth £3.45 million.
Recall that the Italian club announced in March that all the players have agreed to a four months per cut to help the club remain afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic which has paralysed football and business activities across the world.
The pay cut will generate at least £100 million for Juventus but that will not by any means affect the chances of Cristiano Ronaldo to become the 4th billionaire sportsman in the world.
The three sportsmen who belong to this club are the former number one golfer Tiger Woods, boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and former NBA star Magic Johnson.
Most financial analysts, including those who are working for Forbes, believe that the coronavirus pandemic can not stop Cristiano Ronaldo from achieving a billionaire status this year.
Recall that the Portuguese football legend spent 6 years in Manchester United before he joined Real Madrid for a then world-record fee of 80 million pounds. He spent 9 years in Spain before he joined Italian Serial A side Juventus for 100 million euros.
On the day Juventus unveiled Ronaldo, the club sold over 520,000 of his jerseys worth over 60 million dollars.
Based on the four-year deal he signed with Juventus, he has been earning 64 million dollars every year since 2018.
The billionaire race for Cristiano Ronaldo
Besides the money he earns as a football star, the bulk of Ronaldo’s earnings come from the personality he has built for himself over the years. In 2019, he was the second-highest-paid athlete in the world.
Such earnings were drawn from endorsement deals with Altice, DAZN, Electronic Arts, Herbalife, MTG, and Nike. According to Forbs, Ronaldo makes about 44 million dollars from endorsement deals alone every year.
He also earns so much as social media influencer with a total of over 400 million followers on all social media platforms.
Besides that, Ronaldo enjoys a sizable revenue from his own private line of businesses which include male underwears, a chain of hotels in Portugal, footwear and cologne. He is also on the cover of popular video game FIFA19.
So, coronavirus pandemic may not be big enough to stop Ronaldo from being a billion-dollar footballer in 2020.
