This is how much footballers are earning from fake followers

Famous footballers in the world such as Cristiano Ronaldo are not only earning a large sum of their money from the clubs they play for or sponsorships but cash-in in unbelievable amounts from fake Instagram followers.

The most followed people on the social media app Instagram is a list largely compromising of football players, including Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Brazilan Neymar. 

A credibility tool Live Football Tickets wanted to find out if followers of football stars are legitimate. 

Despite a disappointing World Cup showing for Portugal and now playing in Saudi Arabia, Ronaldo reached a staggering half a billion followers on Instagram. 

Footballers and fake followers

The former Manchester United player earns huge amounts on the platform because of his massive followers. 

However, Live Football Tickets used the Instagram credibility tool modash.io to check how many an account has fake followers.

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They also calculated how much of footballers’ earnings per sponsored post come from illegitimate users.

The tool found that of Ronaldo’s 540 million followers nearly 25% are fake followers, with Messia, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe following suit with numbers they wouldn’t consider impressive to have in their repertoire. 

It is widely seen that content creators and Influencers earn money from the picture and video app, however, certain celebrities and sports stars earn more than double. 

Here are the top 5 earnings from Footballer’s Fake Followers

1. Cristiano Ronaldo: 24.4% fake followers, which translates to 130 million fake followers. It is estimated that Ronaldo scores £1,627,980.00 (R34.7 million) per Instagram post – a figure that would be £398,041.11 (R8.5 million) less if it weren’t for his inactive following. 
2. Lionel Messi: 100,716,000 million fake followers – 23.9% of his total following. This fake audience brings him in £195,194.80 (R4.16 million) for the World Cup winner. 
3. Neymar: The Paris Saint-German (PSG) player has 43 million illegitimate accounts about 21.4% of his current total of 201 million followers. He earns an estimated £116,287.12 (R2.49 million) per sponsored post. 
4. Kylian Mbappe: The sensational French player with 19,676,190 of his 95,100,000 (20.69%) followers being illegitimate. This results in £52,982.20 (R1.1 million) worth of potential earnings from every sponsored post for the PSG forward.
5. Karim Benzema: The Real Madrid star has an estimated 16.4 million fake followers about 25.57% of his total 64.3 million. He earns earning an estimated £44,318.46 (R944 026)  from fake followers per sponsored post.

The list also consisted of Spanish defender, Sergio Ramos, at number 6, Zlatan Ibrahovicah number seven, Mohammed Salah at number 8 with 12 million fake followers, Welsh retired player Gareth Bale at number nine and Luis Suarez rounding out the top 10 with 10 million fake followers.

Compiled by Sandisiwe Mbhele