Celebrity Net Worth: Who earns more - Ronaldo or Messi?

In our fortnightly celebrity investment and wealth round-up, Oprah Winfrey invests in molecular skincare brand Dr Barbara Sturm and Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty backs a new food-delivery app

Football players Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have surpassed $1 billion in career earnings. Getty

Cristiano Ronaldo

Arch-rivals Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have both surpassed $1 billion in career earnings, but the Portuguese forward earned more than his Argentinian counterpart over the past 12 months.

Ronaldo, 38, earned $136 million in the year to May 1, making him the world’s highest-earning athlete, according to the latest data by Forbes magazine.

The total includes $46 million from his salary and bonuses while his off-pitch income from endorsements, licensing fees and other businesses brought in another $90 million.

That is in contrast to last year, when Messi led the list with $130 million in earnings. This year, Messi, 35, has been pushed into second place, with his estimated income over the past 12 months remaining at $130 million.

Moving to the Gulf boosted Ronaldo’s take-home pay. He joined Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr football club in January, having ended a second stint with Manchester United late last year. The move boosted his annual playing salary to an estimated $75 million.

With more than 850 million social media followers, Ronaldo is a magnet for the world’s biggest brands.

His massive influence has led to sponsorship deals with Nike (with whom he has a lifetime contract), Armani, Converse, Therabody, Delivery Hero and, most recently, cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

Additional income comes from his CR7-branded clothing, accessories, hotels and gyms.

Forbes puts Ronaldo’s lifetime earnings at $1.24 billion. He is estimated to have a net worth of $500 million after tax, according to wealth tracking website Celebrity Net Worth, although the total does not account for his Al-Nassr salary.

Messi, by contrast, has a net worth estimated by Celebrity Net Worth at $600 million.

Lionel Messi takes family holiday to Saudi Arabia — in pictures

Lionel Messi, Saudi Tourism brand ambassador and his son enjoy learning how to play a popular board game called Carrom during a family break to the Kingdom. Photo: Saudi Tourism Authority

Lionel Messi and his wife his wife Antonela Roccuzzo in Saudi Arabia. Photo: Saudi Ministry of Tourism

Lionel Messi and his sons visited a Saudi farm where they interacted with an Arabian Gazelle. Photo: Saudi Tourism Authority

Lionel Messi and his family pose for a photo during a holiday to Saudi Arabia. Photo: Saudi Ministry of Tourism

Lionel Messi, his wife Antonela Roccuzzo and their sons spent their holiday visiting an authentic Saudi farm. Photo: Saudi Ministry of Tourism

Lionel Messi, Saudi Tourism brand ambassador and his family being given some insider tips on the art of palm weaving. Photo: Saudi Tourism Authority

Lionel Messi has been suspended for two weeks by his club Paris Saint-Germain for an unauthorised trip to Saudi Arabia. Reuters

The Argentine’s next step remains uncertain as his two-year contract with Paris St Germain ends this year.

His earnings over the past 12 months have been evenly split, with his on-field and off-field incomes totalling $65 million each.

After leading Argentina to a Fifa World Cup victory in Qatar last year, he remains a popular choice for brand endorsements, including adidas, PepsiCo and fan platform Socios, which pays him an estimated $20 million a year.

In October, he launched Play Time to invest in sports and technology as a potential post-retirement income stream.

Oprah Winfrey has invested in in molecular skincare brand Dr Barbara Sturm. AFP

Oprah Winfrey

Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey has a reputation for only endorsing causes and products she believes in. Now she is kicking things up a notch with an investment in a molecular skincare brand that she swears by.

Last month, Winfrey announced an investment in the eponymous skincare line created by Dr Barbara Sturm. She said fashion designer Stella McCartney had sent her the products.

“I was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ And I love it so much that I then called up Dr Barbara Sturm and said, ‘I want to invest in your company’. And I have never done that before. Ever. So, that’s how good the products are,” she told audience members during a live interview with the aesthetics doctor in New York City.

The brand was launched in 2014 and is stocked by retailers such as Sephora, Nordstrom and Amazon.

Winfrey, 69, has a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to Forbes. She transformed her talk show, which aired for 25 years, into a formidable media and business empire.

In 2011, Winfrey launched cable channel, OWN. About a decade later, she sold most of her shares in OWN to Discovery for more than $36 million in stock.

She also has a multiyear streaming deal with Apple TV+.

For more than two decades, Winfrey owned magazine O, The Oprah Magazine, in a joint venture with US publisher Hearst. The print edition closed in 2020 and the product was rebranded as the digital-first Oprah Daily.

Outside media, Winfrey has several investments, including a 10 per cent stake in Weight Watchers and equity in online education platform Guild.

She was an early backer of plant drink Oatly but exited the investment in 2021, according to investor information website CB Insights.

Winfrey has also built a real estate portfolio that includes property in California, Nashville and Hawaii.

Actor Suniel Shetty, has invested in food delivery platform Waayu. AFP

Suniel Shetty

Actor and restaurateur Suniel Shetty is taking on the likes of Zomato and Swiggy in India with a food delivery platform that aims to upend the industry’s business model.

The app, Waayu, launched in Mumbai last week and is backed by the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association. It does not take a commission on each order, charging a flat fee instead. There are 8,000 restaurants on the platform.

“I’m an equity holder in Waayu, as well as its brand ambassador,” India’s Mint newspaper quoted him as saying during the launch.

“India’s hospitality industry has grown manifold post-pandemic and both restaurateurs and customers will benefit from Waayu. The hospitality sector teaches you to acquire customers and that's been my learning right from the start when I worked with my dad in his restaurant.”

Waayu was founded by entrepreneurs Anirudha Kotgire and Mandar Lande.

Shetty, 61, has a net worth of $10 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He began his career as a Bollywood action hero in the early 1990s and has acted in more than 100 films.

His production company, Popcorn Motion Pictures, has produced several films, including Khel — No Ordinary Game, Bhagam Bhag and Rakht.

Outside entertainment, he has taken equity stakes in many companies, including non-fungible token marketplace Colexion, and health and wellness start-ups Vieroots and Fittr, according to investor information platform Crunchbase.

Shetty has also reportedly invested in men’s jewellery brand MetaMan, according to media reports.

He is looking to expand his investment portfolio in what he described as a “funding winter” for start-ups.

“I invest in founders like that of Waayu. They are not going to be thinking about their jets and Maybachs, but are going to be thinking of how to cover their backs,” he said.

Actor Ashton Kutcher has launched a new investment fund that will focus on artificial intelligence. Reuters

Ashton Kutcher

Serial venture capital investor and actor Ashton Kutcher has launched a new investment fund focused on artificial intelligence start-ups.

He closed out the $243 million fund in over the space of a month, at a time when ChatGPT and other AI platforms are dominating headlines.

“We pulled the fund together in about five weeks,” Kutcher told Bloomberg Television. “We have a base of [limited partners] that have been with us for years on end.”

With the new fund, Kutcher’s Los Angeles-based Sound Ventures has about $1 billion in assets under management.

The new portfolio includes investments in OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, Stability AI, which has developed text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, and Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot available on Quora.

We’ve been investing in AI for the last seven years. But when we saw GPT launched, we realised that this was an absolute breakthrough

Ashton Kutcher

“We’ve been investing in AI for the last seven years,” Kutcher said. “But when we saw GPT … launched, we realised that this was an absolute breakthrough.”

Kutcher, 45, is one of the richest actors in the world with a net worth of about $200 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

The star of Dude, Where’s My Car and That 70s Show is a prolific investor. Sound Ventures, which Kutcher co-founded in 2012 with talent manager Guy Oseary, has made 186 investments, according to Crunchbase.

They include social media platform Pearpop, educational FinTech LearnLux, cloud start-up Molten, asset manager Ethic and construction rental company Equipment Share.