Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo is the absolute sports leader on all combined social media, according to a recent social media study by a Barcelona-based publicity agency.
Ronaldo has 167.9 million followers on all social media -- 104.9m on Facebook, 37m on Twitter, 28.1m on Instagram and 335,000 on Youtube -- according to the study done by Apple Tree Communications.
Barcelona's Neymar has outpaced Lionel Messi among football players on social media with 102m followers, while his teammate Messi has 101.6m, although he does not have a Twitter account.
The study does not take into account social media in China, where Facebook and Twitter are banned. Ronaldo hit the 100m fan mark on Facebook last October when he was adding fans at the rate of nearly one every second, 54 per minute on average.
Hard works requires hard recovery. http://t.co/cE9FLcfRx1 pic.twitter.com/8t69vSYFXM
- Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano) August 19, 2015
Ronaldo's social media followers outpace that of all football clubs, including the Premier League and La Liga. Barcelona lead all football club social media with 143m followers, with Real Madrid in second with 132.9m followers, according to the report. The next closest side is Manchester United with 83m followers.
In June, Ronaldo sold his image rights to Singaporean tycoon Peter Lim, who owns Primera Division club Valencia, having banked a reported £50 million last year in salary, bonus and endorsements, making him the highest-paid team athlete, according to American business magazine Forbes.
Earlier this month, the FIFA World Player of the Year disguised himself as a homeless man to launch ROC Live Life Loud for the consumer electronics company Monster.
This past January, Ronaldo received the 2014 Ballon d'Or for the second straight year, finishing ahead of Messi and Bayern Munich's Manuel Neuer. Messi earned the honour for four straight years from 2009 to 2012.