Cristiano Ronaldo Set For Eye Watering New Deal With Nike

What do you give the man who's already got everything? Cristiano Ronaldo has earned innumerable accolades, both individually and as part of a team, over the course of his 15 year career and now Nike are going to put the icing on the cake by potentially making the four time Ballon d'Or winner a billionaire.

And all it will take is a few clicks on the Portugal captain's various social media accounts.

In 2016, Ronaldo delivered £442m worth of business to the American sportswear giant just by posting images or videos containing their products or logo on his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts.

A total of 1,703 posts were made across Ronaldo's social media profiles last year, 347 of which contained Nike's patented swoosh, generating a total of 477 million interactions.

The performance of Ronaldo's posts was measured by social media tool Hookit, which estimates that the former Manchester United man's activity was worth just shy of half a billion pounds to Nike, who desperately needed the revenue after a poor year in which they became the worst performing Dow 30 stock, dropping 19% after tripling their value over the previous five years.

With Ronaldo amassing over 260 million followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, it's easy to see why Nike see him as such a vital commodity.

Now, to ensure Ronaldo continues to promote their brand on his social channels, Nike will offer Ronaldo a deal worth a staggering £800m which, when added to his current net worth of roughly £225m, would see the 'Los Blancos' goal machine's career earnings smash the billion pound mark.

The deal is thought to be a lifetime deal similar to that recently signed by Cleveland Cavaliers star and three time NBA Champion LeBron James.

The news continues another dominant season for Ronaldo, who secured his fourth Ballon d'Or, the inaugural FIFA 'The Best' award and the Club World Cup and has found the net 24 times for Real, who currently sit a point clear of Barcelona at the top of La Liga with two games in hand.

Topics: Football, Nike, Cristiano Ronaldo

Joe Baiamonte

Northerner. Assistant Editor of SPORTbible. Studied Journalism and Broadcasting in a portakabin on a car park of Salford University for three years. Believes football peaked with Serie A in the '90s and strong-arms pro wrestling references into as many articles as possible. Neymar once took 50 euros off me during a game of poker.

@JoeBaia