Perhaps most striking is Ronaldo’s level of engagement. He doubles his closest competition with 1.8 billion (with a “b”) social engagements in the past year. That’s more than four times the total engagements produced by the NFL’s five most engaging players over the same time period.
Salah leads the Champions League in engagement rate and growth rate on each of the three platforms. His audience has grown by 22.5 million followers in the past year, building at a 146.7% clip.
The Champions League’s athlete-driven MVPs
Below, we analyze the social performance for the Champions League’s 25 most influential players. We measured their audience, activity, engagement, and growth on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram from the past year — September 18, 2017, to September 18, 2018.
Throughout this period, these 25 players have produced incredible performances on social:
+ 5 billion engagements
+ 2 billion video views
+ 250 million new followers
These are the Champions League’s strongest brands on social.
Audience
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 338.8 million followers
- Neymar — 204.1 million followers
- Lionel Messi — 188 million followers
- James Rodriguez — 90.4 million followers
- Gareth Bale — 82.1 million followers
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 74.6 million followers
- Neymar — 41M million followers
- Gerard Pique — 18.7 million followers
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 122.7 million followers
- Lionel Messi — 90 million followers
- Neymar — 60.8 million followers
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 141.6 million followers
- Neymar Jr. — 102.3 million followers
- Lionel Messi — 98 million followers
Activity
- Iker Casillas — 1.2 thousand posts
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 948 posts
- Sergio Ramos — 944 posts
- Neymar — 839 posts
- Marcelo — 719 posts
- Iker Casillas — 653 posts
- Karim Benzema — 307 posts
- Neymar — 298 posts
- Iker Casillas — 312 posts
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 302 posts
- Sergio Ramos — 260 posts
- Sergio Ramos — 406 posts
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 363 posts
- Neymar — 312 posts
Engagement
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 1.8 billion engagements
- Neymar — 822.1 million engagements
- Lionel Messi — 406.6 million engagements
- Sergio Ramos — 358.1 million engagements
- Paolo Dybala — 232.2 million engagements
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 29.7 million engagements
- Mo Salah — 20.3 million engagements
- Neymar — 17 million engagements
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 149.3 million engagements
- Lionel Messi — 63.5 thousand engagements
- Mo Salah — 36 thousand engagements
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 1.6 billion engagements
- Neymar — 775.4 million engagments
- Lionel Messi — 343.1 million engagements
- Paulo Dybala — 4.49%
- Mo Salah — 4.41%
- Marco Reus — 3.23%
- Isco — 2.94%
- Robert Lewandowski — 2.38%
- Mo Salah — 2.40%
- Paulo Dybala — 2.27%
- Robert Lewandowski — 1.31%
- Mo Salah — 2.28%
- Paulo Dybala — 2.1%
- Luka Modric — 0.77%
- Mo Salah — 9.96%
- Paulo Dybala — 7.4%
- Luka Modric — 5.67%
Growth
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 45.5 million followers
- Neymar — 28.9 million followers
- Mo Salah — 22.5 million followers
- Lionel Messi — 18.5 million followers
- Marcelo — 470 thousand followers
- Cristiano Ronaldo —15.2 million fans
- Neymar — 8.2 million fans
- Mo Salah — 4.1 million fans
- Mo Salah —3.7 million fans
- Paul Dybala — 1.3 million fans
- Lionel Messi — 640 thousand fans
- Cristiano Ronaldo — 30.2 million followers
- Neymar — 28.7 million followers
- Lionel Messi — 18.5 million followers
Growth rate
- Mo Salah — 147.6%
- Paul Dybala — 95.8%
- Paul Pogba — 44.8%
- Antoine Griezmann — 43%
- Luka Modric — 33.7%
- Mo Salah — 142.2%
- Paul Dybala — 78.6%
- Luka Modric — 67.1%
- Paul Dybala — 62.5%
- Mo Salah — 52.2%
- Antoine Griezmann — 8%
- Mo Salah — 280.8%
- Paul Dybala — 103.5%
- Antoine Griezmann — 66.4%