Why Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi Lost Millions of Instagram Followers
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are among the big names who lost millions of followers on Instagram after the platform started a big cleanup to remove fake accounts. Many people shared online that their follower counts dropped as Instagram wiped out millions of inactive and bot accounts in just six hours.
Instagram often does these cleanups to get rid of bots and spam, but this time it was extra intense, causing even some of the world’s most famous stars to lose a huge number of followers. Logan Paul and KSI lost hundreds of thousands of followers, and Ryan Reynolds, a part-owner of Wrexham, also saw a big drop.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson reportedly lost 5 million followers—just like Messi, who’s won the Ballon d’Or eight times. Neymar’s follower count went down by 4 million. But Ronaldo, the most-followed person on Instagram, saw the biggest loss, dropping about 18 million followers.
Right now, Ronaldo has 666 million followers. He shares his lifestyle off the field and earns tons from paid posts and brand deals. Instagram hasn’t said anything official about the cleanup, which also affected big names like Donald Trump, Pope Francis, Justin Bieber, and Kylie Jenner.
As CNN reported earlier, Ronaldo makes an amazing £2.57 million for each Instagram post—more than any other celebrity. His rates have grown a lot over the years. A long time ago, Ronaldo and his team charged £250,000 for about a third of his social media posts in a special digital deal with Sport Lobster, an app Michael Owen invested in.
Harry Hugo, who used to lead Sport Lobster’s social team, said, “We were the first to do a digital-only deal with Cristiano Ronaldo for a quarter of a million pounds. That covered around 30-40 posts dedicated to Sport Lobster, each with a download link. It was a massive deal.”
He added, “Now it costs a million pounds just for him to appear at a TV photoshoot, and the same for a single social media post. Every time Ronaldo posted for us, we’d get around two thousand app downloads, thanks to his 100 million followers back then.”