BARRIO – Lionel Messi has more followers on his social networks than the population of the entirety of South America.
The Argentinian has 476 million followers and is super influential worldwide.
To put this in perspective, Messi reaches more than 10 times the population of Argentina (45.8 million). In fact, Messi’s reach is 300 million greater than the population of the countries he played in as a player: Argentina (45.8 million), Spain (47.3 million) and France (67.5 million) – a total of 160.6 million.
Messi’s fans outnumber the entire population of the South American continent (439 million).
Paulo Dybala, with 68.9 million followers, is also in the top 10 ranking as the eighth most popular player at the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Cristiano Ronaldo is the competition’s most influential superstar on social media with 747.1 million followers.
The Portugal and Manchester United striker is followed by Messi (476 million) and Neymar (337.5 million), giving the three players a combined social media reach of more than one billion worldwide.
Ronaldo’s followers are more than 4.5 times greater than the followers of the England national teams (164 million) and greater than the sum of the population of all the countries in which he has played: England (55.9 million), Italy (59 million), Spain (47.3 million) and Portugal (10.1 million), with a total of 172.3 million.
Ronaldo’s total audience makes Portugal the most followed team in Qatar 2022 with a total of 826 million, ahead of Brazil with 678 million and Argentina with 619 million.
Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale, Kylian Mbappe, Luis Suarez, Paulo Dybala, Antoine Griezmann and Robert Lewandowski make up the the Top 10 for the tournament.
The sum of the total followers of the top 10 players, 2.1 billion, is greater than the sum of the total followers of the rest of the Qatar 2022 World Cup players combined (1.7 billion).