A single sponsored Instagram post by Cristiano Ronaldo has an estimated value of $6,656,469. Lionel Messi’s is around $5,065,391. These are not annual earnings or long-term contracts: it’s what a single social media post generates during the 2026 World Cup.
The calculation was made by MyBettingSites after analyzing the accounts of 1,244 players from the 48 participating national teams, using a benchmark rate of $10 for every 1,000 followers, the same standard applied by the digital advertising market. By that metric, Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar and Mbappé account for 1.540 billion followers among the four of them, 45.4% of the tournament’s total 3.390 billion.
The gap between the elite and the rest is almost astronomical: what Ronaldo earns for one post is equivalent to 14,700 times what Samu Costa, the Portuguese player with the fewest followers in the tournament, receives, with his post being worth about $453. The same football, the same World Cup, completely different rules.