Football Daily - Cristiano Ronaldo: Football's First Billionaire Player (from Good Bad Billionaire)

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Cristiano Ronaldo's World Cup journey is over, and whether we'll ever see him in a Portugal shirt again remains to be seen. In this special edition of Football Daily, BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng brings you an episode of the Good Bad Billionaire podcast, exploring how Ronaldo transformed himself from a boy growing up in poverty on the remote island of Madeira into one of the most recognisable people on the planet. Together they trace Ronaldo's remarkable rise from a homesick teenager at Sporting CP's academy to global superstardom with Manchester United and Real Madrid, where relentless dedication, record-breaking performances and shrewd business decisions helped turn him into both a sporting icon and a global brand. Zing and Simon explore the business of modern football: from mega transfers and billion-dollar brand deals, to tax battles and legal disputes. Ronaldo leveraged social media fame to build his CR7 empire, so is he the ultimate self-made success story, a divisive global brand, or simply the most effective monetiser of talent in sporting history? Good Bad Billionaire is the podcast that explores the lives of the super-rich and famous, tracking their wealth, philanthropy, business ethics, and success. If you want to listen to more of the podcast, including episodes about LeBron James and Roman Abramovich, then search ‘Good Bad Billionaire’ on BBC Sounds.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the global story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States,

2.50. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. It's 2009, a cold January morning, a 23-year-old grips the wheel of a two-day-old $300,000 Ferrari. Overhaired airplanes are coming into land at Manchester Airport. He zooms down into a tunnel and then he smashes into the wall. The front of his sports car crumbles and the windscreen smashes. He gets out of the car, his tall body ripped with muscle, The car is totaled, but he's okay, with barely a hair out of place on his perfectly quaffed head. He jumps into a Bentley that was following right behind him. There's no time to lose.

He has to be on the pitch within the hour. Because this footballer never misses training, and it's his dedication, obsession, some would say, that will make him a billionaire. Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million, and then from a million on to a billion. My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

And on this episode, we've got a billionaire who is actually the subject of several requests from listeners. Yeah, a few of you have requested this one, including Mark, who emailed to say. I just wanted to say how much I enjoy listening to the podcast. Thank you, Mark. It's consistently interesting, well-researched and very engaging. As a suggestion for a future episode, I'd love to hear the story of Cristiano Ronaldo. He's a slightly different kind of billionaire, a genuine rags to Rich's story. It'd be fascinating to see him through the good, bad or just another billionaire lens.

He says, I really think it will be kind of tough, interesting. Well, if you're a football fan, whether he's good or bad, probably depends on whether he's playing for your side or not. Yeah. I mean, the closest I can come to describing it as someone who doesn't watch tons of football. It's like it's like watching someone dance ballet next to someone who can't dance at all. Yeah, no. He had a fleet of foot for sure.

He's got dozens of world records, including the most goals scored in international football, 968 at the time of recording, and the most international caps 226 for his home country of Portugal. Now, 41 years old, he was declared a billionaire just last year worth $1.4 billion. Now, that puts him in a very elite club of billionaire athletes, which you can actually count on your fingers. By many metrics, he's the most famous athlete. Some would say, in the world. I'm sure Lionel Messi might have something to say about that. Well, Ronaldo is also regularly described as an arrogant, as narcissistic, and his behaviour both on and off the pitch is very rarely out of the headlines. So let's try to answer Mark's question,

and to do that, we'll have to go back to the beginning of Ronaldo's story. Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Averro was born in 1985 in Madeira, small Portuguese island out in the Atlantic Ocean. His mother, Dolores was a cook, and a cleaner. His father, Denise, worked as a municipal gardener. Dennis had been a soldier at war and he struggled with depression and alcoholism. Ronaldo was their fourth child and he was an accident. His mother actually considered having an abortion and she's Catholic and very religious,

which just goes to show that they were in pretty dire straits at the time. He was raised in poverty and Ronaldo has said, I was brought up with nothing. I had no toys, no Christmas presents. I shared a room with my brother and two sisters and my parents slept in the other. and him and his siblings would apparently often wait outside a local McDonald's late at night when hungry, hoping the workers might sneak them left over Big Macs. But he said it wasn't a bad childhood.

He said it was all we knew, everyone around us lived the same way and we were happy. There was a football connection. His father worked part-time as a kit man at the local club Andorina, and he asked a player there to be Ronaldo's godfather. Now this godfather said that from a young age, Ronaldo played football constantly. When the other kids were studying, he put his studies on the backseat in order to play football. He also bought him a toy car one Christmas, but Ronaldo kicked up a fuss because he wanted them all.

At the age of seven, Ronaldo started playing for Andorunia. He wore number seven on his jersey for his first match, and he scored a goal in the team's 4-0 victory. And within a year, he'd won his very first individual trophy at a children's tournament where he was elected the best player. But he also, and this will be familiar to anybody who's followed Ronaldo's career, struggled with his emotions on the pitch. His mother, Dolores, said,

as a boy he would get angry and cry easily if the other boys didn't pass in the ball or because they did not play as he wanted they called him cry baby a nickname that's kind of dogged him through his career somewhat the word brat comes to mind exactly and we'll get into that in 1995 age nine he was transferred to Madeira's biggest club

Nacional who paid for the transfer with 20 balls and equipment for the children's team now a couple of years later he went on a three-day trial with top Portuguese club sporting CP He impressed them. They paid around €2,000 to sign him to their youth academy. This meant, just on the cusp of becoming a teenager, he moved from Madeira,

which is obviously that island out there, to just outside Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. I think 20 balls and a bunch of children's sports equipment is probably the cheapest transfer for Ronaldo in history. I bet a Saudi Arabian club at the end of his career, wish they could have got him for that kind of money. Well, Ronaldo had never left Madeira before, and he was on his own and incredibly homesick.

If you visited Madeira, which I have, it's a small island. You know, I'm not surprised he felt really longing for home. And the other boys also mocked his Madeira an accent. He described this as the hardest period of his life. Dolores has said she felt like she was abandoning him, but it was for good reason. And, you know, he's almost a teenager. It must have been really hard. It's quite interesting because I knew some people from Madeira, and there's quite a different accent from Portuguese.

So he would have stuck out, I think, in Lisbon. He would have been seen as a sort of hick from outside, whatever. plus he's very young, plus, you know, he's emotional. So it must have been pretty tough. Age 14, he was expelled from school after he threw a chair at the teacher because in his words, he disrespected me. It's reported that the teacher had made a comment about his family's poverty. Dolores eventually flew in from Madeira to help look after him

and they agreed that he should leave education instead, just pursue football full-time. Ronaldo said that he felt he had potential, but he says, I thought I was maybe good enough at the time to play semi-professionally. And at the age of 15, he was very nearly forced to retire from the sport who was diagnosed of something called tachycardia. His heart beat irregularly. And even when it was resting, it beat too fast.

And to save his career, he had to undergo heart surgery. And just a few days after the operating table, he was back training. And so by 2002, by the age of 17, he was promoted from the youth squad to the main team in a Champions League qualifying match against Inter Milan. That's amazing. Champions League is obviously the top tier of European. in football into Milan, legendary teams. So playing in that tournament, it doesn't get higher level than that.

But this is about the money, right? So what is he earning? There are wildly different accounts of how much he was earning at sporting from as low as €20,000 all the way up to a million euros. Now, a million seems pretty high for a new player. And either way, this is pre-tax. So he's not a millionaire yet. But he was being noticed as a rare talent and international managers

started looking for him, started courting him, basically. Liverpool and Arsenal had scouts in Portugal at his games every week. And Arsenal's manager, Arsane Wenger, tried to woo him, flying him, his mum, his agent to London. And there was a fee of £8 million agreed, but then it completely unraveled. Ronaldo had been recently working with his agent, Jorge Mendez, who would go on to be described as a super agent. Yeah, back then, he was a former nightclub owner and semi-professional footballer who had been working with Portuguese players.

According to someone with inside knowledge, the Arsenal deal fell apart. because it was classic Mendez. With Jorge, you always found yourself in a bidding war, which he promoted, and ultimately it was to his benefit. It's very interesting when big money started coming into football 20, 30 years ago. The role of the agent is absolutely super important because every time they move club, they get paid a percentage. And if you've got some of the players like him on your books,

these super agents can make as much money, or even more than the players themselves. And Wenger wasn't very happy about this deal, was he? No, no. Arsend Wenger was pretty unhappy, to say the least. He never signed another player from Horge Mendes, so he didn't do himself much favour of repeat business there. But he did describe on losing out on Ronaldo as my biggest regret. And that's, you know, given a whole career that Venga had, that's saying something. Instead, Ronaldo signed with Manchester United.

And the signing came a week after friendly between sporting and Manu. And the story goes that at the time, Ronaldo put in such an amazing performance that Manu's players actually begged their manager, Alex Ferguson, to sign him to the team. Real Ferdinand remembers Scalzi, Butte and me were all saying we've got to sign this guy. Scalzy, butty, everyone's got a while on the end of their name in Foote, haven't they? The truth, though, apparently was a little bit different.

Alex Ferguson had already convinced Ronaldo that Manu is the place to go to develop into a world-class player. And, you know, this was a pretty fabulous team at Manu at the time. They were riding high. You had Beckham. The money was probably a drawl. The fee that Manchester United paid established Ronald as the most expensive teenager in English football.

Why was he so valuable? Well, at the time of the signing, Alex Ferguson said he's an extremely talented footballer, a two-footed attacker who can play anywhere up front, right, left or through the middle. Classic manager speak. But in terms of the money, the transfer fee was £12 million just over. But that money doesn't go to Ronaldo. No, it doesn't. So for those who aren't in the know, this is the basics of how football transfers work.

So players sign contracts with clubs for a fixed term. If a player transfers before their contract expires, the new club pays compensation to the old ones where they pay them off. The player, their agent, the club, or the lawyers of which there are many, they thrash out a new contract, including their salary and bonuses, such as a signing-on bonus, loyalty bonus. And the player, the agent and everyone will also share a lump payment for facilitating this move. So the new club will then pay the player their wages. And we don't know all the details, but it was a five-year contract. His salary was more than one and a half million a year. Within days, private jet, flew Ronaldo to Manchester,

and he said it was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane. I don't believe that, because how would he have got from Madeira to Lisbon? Maybe he means a private jet? Maybe. Anyway, he was still 18 years old only and was seen holding Dolores' hand, his mum, as he crossed the street in Manchester. So when can we say Ronaldo becomes a millionaire? On a 1.5 million pound salary,

he would have taken home just under 900K after tax, minus Jorge's agent fees, which will sit somewhere between 5 to 10%, and minus his living expenses and casual spending, we will discuss this later. It is probably safe to say that within a couple of years at Manchester United, so around the age of 20, Ronaldo will have a million in the bank. So he's officially a millionaire. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC,

we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. So age 20, got the world at his feet, he's a millionaire, now we're going to go from a million onto a billion.

So just as Ronaldo became a millionaire, his father actually died, age 53, from liver disease, from his alcoholism. Ronaldo said, I cried every day people say we have money in cars, but we suffered. It frustrates me that he was never able to see my successes. It's a really sad time for Ronaldo. And Alex Ferguson supported him through that time with Ronaldo describing him as a football football football. father for me. The feeling was mutual. Ferguson's written in his autobiography. Cristiano Ronaldo was the most gifted player I managed. He surpassed all the other great ones. I coached at United and I had many. Yeah, I wonder how those people feel. How are the

Beckham's, the Roonies, the Roy Keans feel that Ronaldo in the eyes of Alex Ferguson, Syracke's Ferguson, was considered the best. He's quite tall for a kind of player who plays in those kind of positions. He's six foot two. When he arrived, he had spots and braces. is, but he started working on the body, which he's kind of famous for now. So he started working with Manu's power development coach who said that in the first couple of weeks, Cristiano came to me and said he wanted to become the best player in the world. He wanted to be better than everyone. One thing that was really interesting about, I remember Wayne Rooney talking about him, saying that his work ethic and he would be first of training, last to

leave, even though he was the most talented. Well, some people will say that Messi was the more natural talent, but Ronaldo worked the hardest. So he really applied himself. And the biggest change, this is interesting, came from brain cognition. His coach said he built his brain as much as his back and biceps. He went from being easily manipulated, pushed around, wound up by opponents, to having arguably the steeliest mindset in football is the actual quote there. So that's interesting. Well, just off the back of all this training, Ronaldo soon became the Premier League's most dominant player and he also knew it. He's saying, I started to believe I was the best.

In the 2007-2008 season, he scored 42 goals for Manu, helping them win the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League, aka the European Double. And he won his first Ball and Door trophy, a prestigious award which is given to the best footballer in the world. It's a creme de la creme. It's something that people really want to win in a big way. And his salary started reflecting his status on top.

who was earning over 6 million a year for playing football, not bad. That's around £120,000 a week. What I find is really interesting is that all our other billionaires, we don't talk about what they make a week. It's a peculiar thing about football is that we always translate it to what they make a week. And that comes from its working class routes as a football game when basically players say, he's on a tenor a week, he's on five bomb a week,

120 grand a week. I mean, no doubt car salesmen are knocking on your door the whole time. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of very fancy shops on Regent Street you could walk into. Yeah, exactly. But by this point, his salary wasn't his actual, his major earner. So he was getting 12 million from product endorsements. We've talked before, Tiger Woods, for example, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, exactly. How important Nike has been in making athletes very, very rich.

And Ronaldo's sponsorship deal with Nike began in 2003 when he joined Manu, reportedly worth a few hundred thousand pounds per year then. But by 2009, that was worth around £9 million. In 2009, he signed a deal to become the global ambassador for the petrol company Castrol. He had deals with Coca-Cola, Suzuki, FIFA video games, Xerox copier, an Indonesian energy drink. I mean, his agents working every time to get him this money. He really, I think at this point in his career, was just raking in the sponsorship deals. Well, and the thing about sports people is their careers are short, right?

If you make it 35, you're doing really well. So your big earning years are actually quite short. So I don't really blame them for trying to make Haywell the Sunshine. Also, you could break your leg at any time. You could be out of commission. Well, you know, Indonesian energy drinks and Xerox, copiers aside, at this point of his career, Ronaldo, is a global superstar. And so this, obviously, starts causing tensions within what's essentially a team sport.

Yeah. In his teammate Rio Ferdinand's autobiography, he wrote, The game became the Cristiano Ronaldo show. He was trying to show his skills and nothing was coming off. We lost and afterwards the manager absolutely destroyed him. Playing by yourself. Who do you think you are? I'm not going to try and do Alex Ferguson's voice for this.

When Ferguson substituted him for one game, Ronaldo reacted very badly. The manager publicly admonished him and he told the media, you cannot get everything your own way. And to top it all off, Ronaldo also made headlines when he crashed his two-day-old, 300 grand red Ferrari in a tunnel near the Manchester airport. He was uninjured and he caught a lift to practice,

but I'm sure his teammates were not very impressed with that either. Yeah, I remember this was a period when he was doing a lot of showboating on the pitch. He had this thing where he would do what they call stepovers, which is you look like you're going to take the ball that way and you step over it. It's kind of a dummy. And you can do lots of these at once, and it can end up looking quite ridiculous. And Alex Ferguson's character being a hard,

Gladysian former pub owner Gaffet. Not have taken kindly to that kind of showboating. Anyway, after six years at the club where they were fantastically successful and he had become, if not the best player in the world, one of the top two. He was making it very public that he wanted

to leave Manu because Manchester United as illustrious as it is, there is one other club in European football which really stands above them all in terms of success and that is Rail Madrid. And he got his wish to play there because in 2009, they bought the 24-year-old for 93 million euros.

That at the time was a world record to transfer fee. And Real Madrid agreed to pay Ronaldo. It was reported at 11 million euros salary per year. So that's nearly a million euros a month. So at this point, it's probably worth stepping back and asking the question, how can these football clubs afford these enormous transfer fees and salaries? Well, they make a lot of money. Ticket sales do account for some.

The tickets are very expensive, as anyone who's bought a season ticket will know. but they also sell broadcast rights to their games. Which is huge, but sponsorship of merchandising, and they also make a lot of money out of that. Yeah, they want to profit off a player's name in his image, so they normally try to negotiate an exclusive right to control how images of a player appears in advertising and publicity. But because if you're a player, this is where your power is,

you're reluctant to give this up, because this means giving up big money from sponsorship, from, you know, your Adidasas, your Nikes. So image rights are really fiercely contested over in contract negotiations. So a deal will be struck, maybe 50-50 split between player and club, although we don't know what the Ronaldo split with Real Madrid was. Yeah, and also just don't forget about these video games like FIFA and what have you. The image of that player in that shirt, so clearly the shirt is the intellectual property of the club.

The image of the player in that shirt is, you know, so you can see how they fight over this. And there's lots of money involved. So that's why image rights become really important. And a player's value to a football club then is not just about how good. They are on the field, that's the foundation of it. It's about their earning power as a global celebrity. And if you remember, Rail Madrid had a great rival.

One of the great rivalries in international football is Barcelona versus Rail Madrid. And at the same time he was at Rail Madrid. Lionel Messi was at Barcelona. So you had these two, and sports fans and people and advertising people and whatever, love these kind of dynastic rivalries. It was a perfect combination of factors and influence. the same time. But he was also making headlines off the pitch. The night before his Rail Madrid deal was confirmed, he was photographed at an LA club with Paris Hilton. I haven't

heard from her for a while. What's she up to? She's currently very invested in the longevity industry. Is she? Oddly. Yeah, she's got a cryogenic freezer or something in her house. Oh, really? Okay. A crisis PR consultant said, call me a cynical old publicist, but it's a marriage made in franchise heaven and an act of sublime stuntsmanship. It cannot be a Coincidence. He noted Ronaldo had huge appeal to the US-American Latino market, important, very lucrative market. Well, Parasotan wasn't the only celebrity when Ronaldo was romantically linked to in the tabloids. He was reported to have been seen kissing Kim Kardashian in Madrid. He also dated a supermodel, Irene Shake, from 2010 to 2015.

And there are also plenty of other models that he's been linked to. The Playboy image probably doesn't hurt, especially if you're lining up a deal with places like Armani. Brand Ronaldo was about being this well-dressed metrosexual multi-millionaire athlete and the spending was ostentatious to keep up with that. We're talking he was spending $8,000 a month on clothes. He even told a newspaper, I love this, that Forbes had underestimated his fortunes

when he put his wealth at 160 million saying that is not correct. On paper it's actually much closer to $245 million. That kind of chimes, doesn't it, with the whole, I'm the best on the pitch don't underestimate me kind of thing he did keep one thing very secret though the identity of the mother of his

child now Christio Ronaldo junior of course was born in 2010 and in agreement with the mother the baby was raised under his exclusive guardianship and it's reported that the mother was paid 10 million pounds for full paternity he said my son is the most

important thing in my life after that it's the football that matters to me most money comes after that Anyone who says that is usually already rich. Well, while he was now a celebrity off the pitch, on the pitch he was becoming a legend. So he won the Bollando four more times between 2013 and 2017. He was a star player at Real Madrid.

He had a lot of power, a lot of influence. Keeping Ronaldo happy was basically the number one rule at the club. Even something as important as a team's formation was shaped around how he actually wanted to play. And his pay reflected his super status. By 2016, he had become the world's high. highest paid athlete, according to Forbes, and his contract was worth around €15 million a year in salary and bonuses. For instance, he got a seven-figure bonus for shooting the winning penalty for the Champions League title.

He was also earning €30 million a year in endorsements. He got the Nike contract, of course, Tag Hoyer, the watch company, dietary supplements, a poker website. Again, the agent really doing pulling his weight there. But Ronaldo understood that if he was selling his image, why not own the brand? So in 2013 he launched something called CR7, which is Cristiano Ronaldo, and his number seven. And it began just with men's underwear, retailing at about $30, but soon went into shirts and footwear. So he was not doing the designing himself. He partnered with a designer and Danish manufacturer.

And of course, there was the obligatory celebrity CR7 fragrances. So really rinsing the brand here as hard as he can. Well, he also went all out. He spent thousands of pounds having CR7 etched into the windows of his home. I can't imagine what that does to the light you get in there. He emblazoned his sofa, tables, plates of CR7. He said it was probably the most extravagant thing I've ever done, which is big coming from Cristiano Ronaldo.

Things really did step up gear, though, when he opened a CR7 museum in Madeira, a space dedicated to his trophies. I've actually walked around outside. I've walked around outside this museum. Oh, yes, you went, didn't you? Yeah, I didn't went as in, but I did go outside, and I saw the statue of Ronaldo.

The statue at the museum is, not the famous one that had to be taken down because it looked too bad. But I will say the statue in Fonschow on the harbour also does not really look like him either. Okay. So whatever he says about etching CR7 into his plates and homes, he really needs to get a better sculptor. Yeah. And he got into a chain of hotels. He opened a gym franchise, all these CR7 products like the underwear, the fragrances, the hotels, the gyms, all on licensing and partnerships. And it's a pretty great way of making money because there's no capital at risk here. All right. all you're using is your image, your name, what have you.

This, once you've got it, is kind of free, and the earning power is enormous. So in terms of return on capital, it's a dream. Interestingly, the one brand he owns that doesn't bear the CR7 name is a hair transplant clinic called Insparia, which is quite interesting. I think it ties into his whole metrosexual image, right? I mean, male hair transplants are a huge industry now. Yeah, speaking of someone in their mid-50s, actually just now late 50s. I have to say, which is sad to say. Don't out yourself on air.

I can tell you that hair transplant was not a thing when I was in my 20s and 30s. It was unheard of. And certainly if you had one, you wouldn't want to talk about it. No, for sure. Well, we've mentioned the Nike partnership, but at the end of 2016, he got the ultimate cash cow, a lifetime deal with the biggest and richest sport brand. This is only the third lifetime deal they had made. And we've actually covered the other two on this podcast,

LeBron James and Michael Jordan reported this lifetime deal could be worth more than a billion dollars over time, an annual fee of just under 18 million plus. Nike gave Ronaldo performance bonuses like an extra $4.5 million for winning the Ball and Door in 2016 and again in 2017. So the more successful he is on the pitch, the more the sponsors pay him for his increased profile. But, you know, as expensive as this is, it's probably really good value for Nike. Ronaldo was becoming one of the big social media giants. You know, and social media is now probably the primary way to sell to people. It's reported that over 329 posts across his social media platforms,

he generated just under $500 million in value for the brand. Wow. In fact, in 2018, he overtook Selena Gomez to become the most followed person on Instagram. We've actually also done Selena Gomez on this podcast. And just a few years later, he became the first person ever with half a big, million followers on the platform. I find that absolutely amazing. I would not, if you'd ask me who is the most followed person on Instagram, he would not be it.

I think it goes to show just the power of football is the world's most popular game. Astonishing, half a billion followers. And of course, you know, as you rightly say, this coincided with where brands realize that the way to get to the mass market was through social media platform. So obviously, he's incredibly powerful in that way. But the contract with Nike comes with a couple of strings attached. Yeah. Well, he had this lifetime deal, but the specific contract itself was only 10 years, right?

One of the conditions was he had to still be playing for a top-tier club. On average, professional footballers retire, I would say mid-30s. With this contract, he had years left on the field. So in 2018, age 33, pretty old for a player. He left Real Madrid and moved to Juventus. The transfer cost 112 million euros. That was the highest ever for a player who was over 30 years old. His new annual salary around 30 million.

euros. And on moving to Juventus, Ronaldo promised that they would win the Champions League. Big promise. The club was probably thinking about more than just how many goals Ronaldo could score them though, because within 24 hours of this deal being announced, Juventus got 5 million new social media followers. In his first season, the club's revenue grew by 58 million euros, including selling double the number of shirts. I bet Renardo shirt comprised quite a lot of those shirts. Yeah. It's fascinating how quickly when a star player signs for a club, how quickly the shirt with their name and number manages to make it into their shop. But his three years at Juventus were not quite as glorious as Ronaldo hoped or

promised. He didn't bring the team that much success. They didn't win the Champions League. And, you know, you can kind of go back and forth on this. Was this actually a good move on the club's part? Football fans are very club focused. You don't change your allegiance to your club. It's for life. So there might be a lot of Ronaldo fans who are. perhaps supported Manchester United, who might like the idea of the Juventus shirt so they would buy one with Ronaldo on because they've got an association with the player.

And that must be such an ongoing tension in football, right? Because you have these superstar players. You say, well, I'm bringing you the money. I'm bringing you the fans. And the club can say, well, at the end of the day, you're playing for us. And the club, you know, La Mafia or so triumphs overall. The club is bigger than any individual, matey boy.

Classic, yeah, exactly something Alex Ferguson would say. But he had another move up his sleeve because in 2021, now age 36, he moved back to Manchester United. I remember this very clearly. Everyone said he's back. It was like homecoming. And suddenly all the people who hated him for having left in the first place, welcomed him back with open arms.

Man United played a lot less than the event as they paid 15 million euros compared to 112 just three years earlier. But it didn't go that well, to be honest. The time back at Manchester United was pretty troubled. The goals didn't come as easily. He is 36, after all. There was tension behind the scenes. He had some big distractions.

off the pitch. And we should probably actually take a moment to catch up with his personal life. Well, Ronaldo met his girlfriend, Georgina Rodriguez, in 2016 in a Gucci store. Of course. She was working as a sales assistant. And according to them, it was love at first sight. Yeah. What attracted you to the millionaire footballer.

Hmm. A year later, he announced he had become father to twins via an American surrogate. And just six months later, Georgina gave birth to a child they had together. So now we get to spring 2022. He's playing for Man United. D'Ogino was expecting twins, but sadly they announced that one of those twins died during childbirth. Oh dear, yeah. There was also a legal case playing on Rinalda's mind in the summer of 2022.

A US judge finally dismissed a rape allegation, a civil lawsuit against him that had been rumbling on for a few years. Catherine Mayorga allegedly raped her at a Las Vegas hotel in 2009. Now, he denies allegations. He does not deny the two met in Las Vegas in 2009. He said what happened between them was consensual, and he has never been charged. The Clark County District's Attorney Office in Las Vegas

said she reported an assault in 2009 but refused to state where it had happened or who the attacker was. And as a result, police were unable to conduct any meaningful investigation. She reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement with Ronaldo in 2010 for $375,000. But at her request, the allegations were investigated by police in 2018.

And in 2019, US prosecutors said he would not face charges over the accusations, as they could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt. She also brought a civil lawsuit seeking millions more. She said that while she had agreed to the settlement shortly after the alleged incident, her emotional trauma at the time did not allow her to participate in the mediation process, she felt pressured to accept the offer. But in 2022, the lawsuit was dismissed. The judge said her lawyer had improperly attempted to use documents that were leaked or stolen in a cyber attack to pursue the case.

They're not admissible. The lawyer had sought and used documents. from a website called football leaks, including those clearly marked attorney-client-privileged. So we finally get to autumn 2022. A year after joining Manchester United, Ronaldo is unhappy at the club. So he does an interview with Pierce Morgan, which is described pretty much everywhere as explosive. In it, he says he's got no respect for the current manager, Eric Tantagg. He takes shots at former teammates, even the club's owners.

Big no-no. These are the guys who are paying your bills. The fans hate this, as does the club, obviously, and the club releases a statement, Cristiano Ronaldo is to leave Manchester United by mutual agreement with immediate effect. Yeah. The interview even caused a breakup between Ronaldo and his long-term super agent, remember him, Jorge, who described it as a huge screw-up, although he used a much ruder word, as you can imagine. So in December, at the World Cup in Qatar, Ronaldo was no longer the star player.

Polls in Portuguese newspapers even called for the national. team manager to drop him. It's so brutal this. You know, this happens in sport. You know, you can't be on top forever. And it feels very brutal when having once been the god of Portuguese football, people are then saying, should he even be in the team? In Portugal's final two games, Ronaldo suffered the humiliation of being downgraded to a substitute. He left the pitch in tears as Portugal exited the World Cup. Yeah, I remember this. This was a big viral moment. But we're not quite at the final whistle in this story yet, are we? No, we're not. Ronaldo saved his most lucrative signing for the very last. In 2023, he signed to the Saudi Arabian club Al Nasser, relocating his family to Riyadh. Now, he may have been 37, geriatric by football terms, but the new contract earned him the highest average annual pay for a sportsperson. That is around 200 million a year in salary and bonuses. Don't forget, everything's tax-free in Saudi. Plus perks, including a $30 million signing bonus. And his contract also reportedly included, including,

other perks such as an equity stake in the club and access to a private jet. Yeah, this is an interesting one. Saudi Arabia has been on a mission. They've got a kind of 30-year plan to diversify their economy away from oil, which is 90% of the kingdom's revenues, into things like tourism, shopping, sport, entertainment, etc. So they did this with football. They wanted to have a big league there and lure some top players, a bit like the US does as well.

If you think Lionel Messi went to play for a team in the year, US at the end of his career. And they've done it in golf as well. They have this thing called the Liv Tour to try and rival the PGA tour. And some people will call this sports washing. It's basically putting another lick of international sport to legitimize itself. You know, despite some human rights issues. You remember, of course, the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,

the arrests and alleged torture of women's rights campaigners, for example, ongoing arbitrary, an opaque nature of Saudi Arabia's justice system. How do you put that to one side? One way of putting it is presenting things like a desirable tourist destination. Ronaldo, remember, is still the most popular person in the world on Instagram with over 675 million followers. If it's good enough for Christiana Ronaldo and his 675 million followers, you try and start thinking differently about Saudi as a place rather than some of its old associations. So sports washing can be pretty effective.

Qatar itself did very much the same by whole. in the World Cup. Well, along with the human rights criticism, Ronaldo has also faced blowback for moving to a football league that also was just not particularly. Good, yeah, exactly. There's no way of getting around it. Well, in a press conference, Ronaldo was caught up on this. He has said, it's normal to criticize what league is not criticised, where there aren't problems and controversy. There are everywhere, Spain, Portugal. Ronaldo has argued that he's actually paving the way for other footballers to join him in Saudi saying, everyone thought I was crazy.

It's a privilege to change a country's culture and football to have great stars. It makes me proud. I was the pioneer and I feel proud of it. I think there is some truth in that. I think that people saw someone like Ronaldo go. And if you are a, he's the top of the tree. If you're a jobbing footballer in the middle leagues and you're not making much money and you know you're never going to get to the top of the premiership or the European Champions

League, whatever, someone offers you some money in a way. you know, the fact that Ronaldo's playing there, does that make an easier decision to take you? And I think it probably does. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. And in 2025, he extended that contract with Al Nasser, reportedly worth now $400 million, blind me. Tax-free. He got a 15% stake in the club.

After that deal, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, we often use Forbes, but Bloomberg said Ronaldo's net worth was $1.4 billion. So Ronaldo is a billionaire. the very first football billionaire aged 40. And interestingly, he stands apart from the small group of billionaire athletes who made the majority of their fortunes from sponsorship or owning companies. You know, Nike was the big factor in Jordan Fortune. Most of his wealth is derived from his salary on the pitch.

Thanks very much, I think, to the tail end of his career in Saudi. Yeah, that's undeniable. So what does the future hold for Cristiano Ronaldo? Well, I mean, he's getting on a bit. in football terms. He's going to have to stop playing the sport at some point. He's also, you know, not just a footballer, right? He's like a case study in how you can monetize global celebrity and sporting fame. He's still the most followed person on Instagram. Wow. I just find that's incredible. Yeah, incredible. He's still earning 18 million each year

off the pitch from Nike. And he also now has five hotels in the CR7 hotel chain and over a dozen locations for his hair transplant clinic. So if you ever wanted to fix your hairline in a Ronaldo approved way, you can visit one of those clinics. So that is the Cristiano Ronaldo number seven superstar story. It's now time to score him in a bunch of categories. It's kind of bit of fun, really, between Norton Ternon's on some different categories. Well, the first category is wealth. We all judge power, controversy, legacy later on.

But in the wealth stakes, you know, he's relatively minor, $1.4 billion. That's according to Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg. Forbes hasn't listed him. him that yet, which is quite interesting. Yeah. But boy, does Ronaldo know how to spend it. He sure does. I went to Portugal to see a friend and we played a bit around a golf just outside Lisbon and there was this vast home being built right over the gold course. And I just kind of

said, I think I know who that must be. And it was. It was Cristiano Ronaldo having this whopping great house built right there on the golf course, probably one of many, many properties. He's got a Gulfstream G200 jet that cost about $19 million. He's got 20 supercars. He's got a Bagatti, Maserati, Bentley, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce Phantom, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc. So he even bought his agent, Jorge Mendez, a Greek island. Good Lord. And he recently got engaged at Georgina. The ring had a diamond the size of a walnut, I'm told.

Apparently around 37 carrots, nearly $5 million. Wow. When we do these things, it's not just how much money they have, but how they spend it. I think he scores quite highly in that category for sure. And also, don't forget, we also like to factor in a rags to richest element into the How far have they come? And he has come really far. Yeah.

From sleeping in a single room with all his siblings, having to basically wait outside McDonald's begging for food, essentially. Having been mocked by his teacher for his poverty. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think this scores pretty highly in this one, actually. I'm going to give him a seven or eight, I think. I think I'll give him an eight because, you know,

that rags to riches journey and how he spends it. And also how much money he's made from actually doing the thing he does. The amount of money he's actually earned with his two feet playing football is quite amazing. So I think you're right, eight, eight for wealth. What about controversy? Well, we've already spoken about the rape case, which he denies, but there are also other instances of controversy in his career.

There's, for instance, a tax evasion. Yeah, in 2018, he accepted a nearly 19 million euro. Fine, a 23-month suspended jail sentence in Madrid. In Spain, a two-year sentence for a first offence can be served on probation with no requirement for custody. He was accused of avoiding paying tax in Spain, between 2010 and 2014 when he was playing for Rail Madrid. And it was kind of all around the image rights deal.

Prosecutors said the proceeds were funneled through low tax companies in foreign nations to avoid paying the required tax. And in court, as part of the deal, he acknowledged four incidents amounting to nearly 6 million euros own. It's amazing how often sports players get involved in these tax things. I often don't think that they are particularly, often the tax advisors, I advise them to sell a bit close to the wind. But remember Boris Becker got done for that.

Yeah, if you're a superstar athlete, maybe worth paying a little bit more attention to who you're hiring as an accountant and what they're advising you. I think for the football fan, the controversy about Ronaldo is about his demeanour, his behaviour on the pitch. Is he a team player?

Is he not a team player? Is he arrogant? Does he showboat? Those are kind of issues. Yeah, I mean, the word theatrics comes to mind, right? And Ronaldo has said modestly, if God can't please everyone, I won't either. Oh my God.

I mean, that is the kind of behaviour that makes you put your head in your hands, doesn't it? And of course there's the decision to play for Saudi Arabian team which we have discussed. So there's quite a lot there. A smattering of lots of different types of controversy there, aren't there? So I'm going to give him, I'm going to score him highly on this one. He still divides opinion as we look back in his career.

No one can deny how many goals he scored, nearly a thousand in top flight football. But I would say I'm going to give him a solid seven for controversy. Oh, I mean, I'm actually going to come down on seven as well. I mean, it's a buffet of controversy. Yeah, it is. If you can look at it that way. And let's talk about power, which is another our categories. And this is an interesting one. And I would say his arrogance crops up again here. Because during his peers Morgan interview, peers suggested that Christiana Rinalda and Trump were the most famous people in the world, to which he insisted he was the most

famous thing. I think worldwide, even in the small islands, they know me more than him. I think in the world, nobody's more famous than me. Tell me one. Tell me one. Those are the words of a man who has rejected press trading. I can tell you that. Yes, exactly. I think Taylor Swift would have something to say about that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Anyone else on that? Anyway, we've probably covered them if there is anyone up there. Throughout his career, he's also held a lot of, this is an interesting one. We talk about power, power within a team structure. He scores very highly on that. Yeah, and not just, you kissing the ring, right? It's about you're changing the entire way your team plays around one man,

which, you know, definitely does rub people up the wrong way. Yeah. Power, I think within the sport and within his teams, he would be a nine. Outside of sport, I'd give him a four, so I'm going to come down at six. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll go even lower, like maybe five out of ten. I just feel like, at this current point, could he get an audience at the White House? Well, Trump certainly wouldn't want to meet him after he said he was more famous than Trump. And then Legacy, the record books are full of Ronaldo's name. His own hometown in Madeira changed the name of his airport to Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. Okay, you've made it.

So you've made it. It's like JFK, John Lennon, Louis Armstrong, Cristiano Ronaldo Airport. Yeah. Legacy, I think that his scoring record of nearly 1,000 goals in top football will be very, very hard to beat, I would say, because he played for so many years at the top level. So for Legacy, I think he's going to be, whenever you look up scoring records, for the history of time, his name will be right at the top of the top. top or very near the top, so I'm going to give him an eight for legacy. Yeah, I think I'm going

to give him an eight. Despite all the controversy, I think he'll go down in history as one of the most talented players of his generation. I think he will go down as the person who brought application and hard work to maximise his talent. No one thinks he's as talented as Leonel Messi, but everyone thinks he worked harder than anyone else to maximize his talent. And he certainly showed individual footballers that the sky is the limit when it comes to earning money. For sure. Okay. So is he good, bad, Just another billionaire. What do you think of Cristiano Ronaldo? Email good bad billionaire, that's all one word, at BBC.com, or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 0.01-917-6861176. And tell us what you think.

And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode. So who's our next billionaire? Well, he's been called the Mozart of the Attention economy. He's the living embodiment in a way of the YouTube phenomenon, which has transformed. the media landscape, and he managed to crack the code of how to make something go viral. And he's become very rich off it. That is Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast. On our next episode of Good Bad Billionaire. Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The editor is Paul Smith, and it's a BBC Studios production.

For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green, and the commissioning editor is John Minnell. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

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