Brand CR7 leaps higher than footballer Cristiano Ronaldo

The first venture was the CR7 lifestyle brand in 2006. He opened the first branch in Funchal, his hometown, with his mother, who worked as a gardener. “It’s a deeply emotional moment for me, to start something like this in the town I was born and I was made,” he said in a teary interview with journalists. In subsequent years, it spread to other parts of Portugal and Europe, before it slowly retreated to the background amidst more ambitious enterprises. The brand added a fragrance sticker, the extremely popular (and parodied) CR7 underwear line (with the most ad-caption fans that want to dress like Ronaldo), shoes, eyewear and track-pants. The pandemic body-blow hit the sales hard and the shutters of the clothing stores, including the one in Funchal, were rolled down. But the CR7 underpants brand has grown as exponentially as the cult of Ronaldo.

Portugal footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. (FILE photo)

The most serious endeavour set off in 2015, during his peak Real Madrid years. He entered into hospitality industry with the Pestana Group, owned by millionaire Dionisio Pestana. On the basis of a 50-50 agreement, they opened a chain of hotels in Portugal and later Europe. He chose the first, in another ode to his home-town, in Funchal. Another emotional press conference followed. Additions sprung in Lisbon, Times Square in New York, Madrid and Marrakesh, while an ambitious project is unfolding in Paris, on the left bank of the River Seine near the Austerlitz train station. All hotels are commonly-themed: Ronaldo. In 2022, the group claimed that its revenue touched € 500 million.

Real estate was another obvious investment pool—even though he did cop losses, like when he sold the apartment he had bought in Trump Tower, on New York’s Fifth Avenue, for a massive cut—and his empire includes a seven-storey apartment block in Funchal, where his mother and brother live, a villa in Turin, a £6m mansion on a gated fortress estate called La Finca near Madrid, a sprawling holiday home in Marbella, and the most expensive flat in Lisbon (£6.5m).

The odds for being successful as a celebrity-athlete-cum-business are higher, because Ronaldo, as is Beckham or Williams, is one of the most famous athletes on earth, the perfect blend of sporting excellence and glamour, harnessed by a group of expert advisors. He has other selling points than his looks and greatness on the field. His is an inspiring underdog story, of self-made success, a riveting pursuit of perfection, the human form of ambition, of longevity and physical conditioning. In a sense he was made as much for business as he was for football. The corporate attire, demeanour and speak suit him more than his eternal rival Lionel Messi (you could imagine him in only the Barcelona stripes), or others like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar.

Cristiano Ronaldo has been backed to play the 2026 World Cup by Portugal teammate Bruno Fernandes. (Reuters)

Besides, like other successful entrepreneurs, athletes rarely launch businesses or invest alone. They do it with seasoned partners, like Ronaldo did with Pestana. His trusted advisors include his older brother Hugo Aveiro and former Sporting teammate Miguel Paixao.

The most shocking was his acquisition of his stakes (estimated 20 percent share in the media firm Cofina, which owns Correio da Manha, the most circulated newspaper in the country, a sports daily, a business paper and a television channel. Before buying the stakes, he has sued the newspaper eleven times. “I have no respect for that newspaper because it is constantly inventing news, inventing controversies, inventing a bad relationship, a bad atmosphere in the national team,” he had said. In another incident, he threw a reporter’s microphone into a lake during Euro 2016. Then, he would have gone by the business text logic that if you can’t stop them fighting, then buy them.

So vast and diverse are his investments that Ronaldo the footballer no longer exists. Only CR7 the brand does. The greatest footballer, goalscorer, the richest footballer on the planet, Insta-emperor, social-media influencer (charges around £1.2m to endorse a product), god of ads, the avatars are many. He lives the Andy Warhol quote that, “Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.” The only brag he cannot brag about is that he is not a World Cup winner. That would make him feel like a bankrupt billionaire though.