Cristiano Ronaldo has had his blue tick removed despite being most-followed athlete on Twitter

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of many high-profile celebrities and athletes to have their blue tick removed on Twitter after Elon Musk's changes came into play.

Musk completed a $44 billion (£38.1 billion) takeover of Twitter in October and announced his intentions of changing the app's approach.

He also cut down the company's staff members by over 5,000, in a hugely controversial move.

And the biggest alteration was switching to a subscription based service called 'Twitter Blue'. Verification, which has a number of extra perks, now costs $8 per month.

And anyone who did not pay up, no matter what social status or fame they have, has lost their "legacy verified checkmarks" as a result.

It includes five-time Ballon d'Or winner, Ronaldo, who is the most-followed athlete on the platform with 108 million followers. Ronaldo's profile does not contain a blue tick and there's no word on whether the Portuguese superstar will be reapplying.

Manchester City duo Aymeric Laporte and Riyad Mahrez have both been critical of the move and confirmed they will not be signing up despite having the funds to do so.

Mahrez wrote: "Already lost it once, not scared of not having it anymore I'm not paying for this weird ideas lol."

A fan told City teammate Laporte to pay the fee as he is "rich" but the Spain international hit back, replying: "That's not the point tho I'm not paying for something that was perfectly fine before some crazy dude decided to change everything lol."

BBC Match of the Day host Gary Lineker, who was briefly suspended for his social media activity, still has a blue tick after paying for the service.

The former England striker says he made the choice in order to make use of the edit function available.

NBA legend LeBron James previously went on record to say he would not be paying for verification but the blue tick is still present on his profile.

Musk says he has personally paid for his blue tick, along with William Shatner and Stephen King.

“I’m paying for a few personally,” Musk wrote in response to a Twitter account reporting that some complimentary Twitter Blue subscriptions were provided.