Cristiano Ronaldo may not be the world’s best-paid athlete in Forbes magazine’s annual list, but he is definitely the most mentioned.
Since January 2014, the Portuguese football star’s name has been featured in a total of 741,969 news stories, reports an online study that analyses more than 85,000 news sites every day.
This easily beats his Argentine rival Lionel Messi who only managed 599,115 mentions.
No. 3 on the list was NBA basketball player LeBron James (462,825) – coincidentally also the third best-paid athlete, according to Forbes.
Swiss and Spanish tennis players Roger Federer and Rafael Nadel complete the top-five, with 421,411 and 375,482 mentions each, followed by golfers Tiger Woods (343,609) and Phil Mickleson (203,846).
Another NBA star, Kobe Bryant, is also on the list, being the eighth most mentioned athlete (121,797), followed by the world’s best-paid athlete, boxer Floyd Mayweather (110,228) and finally American footballer Matt Ryan (33,104).
The data was gathered by global media analysts Cision.
