Cristiano Ronaldo is off to another strong start this season with eight goals in his first four games for Real Madrid. The 30-year-old forward led Los Blancos to a 4-0 win on Wednesday over Shakhtar Donetsk with three goals in the opening round of the Champions League. The hat trick pushed his Champions League record career goal tally to 80, three ahead of rival Lionel Messi.
Ronaldo is arguably the most popular athlete on the planet with 174 million followers across Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. Now his legion of fans will be able to smell just like the three-time World Player of the Year.
Last week in Madrid, Ronaldo launched his own fragrance, Cristiano Ronaldo Legacy, in a partnership with Eden Parfums, which is the company behind the wildly successful One Direction fragrance. In a project two years in the making, Ronaldo has been involved in every aspect of creating the brand from selecting ingredients to packaging to coming up with the name himself.
“I wanted it to have a personal connection and include my name. Legacy is a word that is meaningful to me,” says Ronaldo in an email reply to questions from Forbes. “It’s about creating a lasting impression and something that people remember you for. It’s what I want to do in both my life and my career.”
The fragrance will be available in thousands of stores around the globe starting in the fall in Europe, Mexico and Australia. The brand will launch in the Middle East, Asia and at travel retailers in 2016.
Ronaldo poses in front of a wall of his new fragrance that he spent the past two years developing.
The fragrance launch continues a trend by Ronaldo in recent years to develop his own brands with companies instead of go for the straight endorsement deal. His first venture was CR7 Underwear which came to market in October 2013 in a partnership with JBS Textile. It was a natural start for the former Armani underwear model. The underwear line was a huge success with the brand hitting its annual sales target in the first month. Ronaldo later launched a line of shirts and footwear under the CR7 brand. The goal is to establish a stable of premium men’s lifestyle brands.
“It’s important to me to give something that is 100% myself,” says Ronaldo. “I love working with endorsement deals, but my own projects are something that I am passionate about and something that I would like to continue growing. For me, I like the processes, the creativity and learning about new industries.”
Ronaldo is hardly the first iconic athlete to launch his own fragrance line. Michael Jordan released his first cologne in 1996. Retail sales of Derek Jeter’s Driven line of colognes hit $29 million in 2009, according to Euromonitor. Coty is celebrating its decade-long partnership with David Beckham this year. Coty sells more than $100 million annually worth of Beckham’s signature fragrances. The partnership, which was recently extended through 2017, kicks off an estimated $6 million annually for Beckham.
Ronaldo is already the highest-paid soccer player and the top earner in all of team sports. Only boxers Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao earned more than Ronaldo’s $79.6 million over the last 12 months. His $27 million in income off the pitch is from endorsement partners like Nike , Tag Heuer and Herbalife , as well as his own line of products.
Ronaldo’s social media following gives him a huge platform to shill for his sponsors and his own brands. His 106 million Facebook followers are more than any other person on the planet. Ronaldo posted six times on Facebook over two days last year regarding Tag Heuer’s “Don’t Crack Under Pressure” campaign. The posts accumulated 35 million views with 2.4 million “likes” over two days and an estimated value of $380,000 for Tag, according to research firm Repucom (see “Cristiano Ronaldo Heads The Most Popular Athletes On Social Media”).
Ronaldo is arguably underpaid based on the value he generates for his sponsors and Real Madrid. Real has been a staple at the end of the Champions League tournament with five straight trips to the semifinals and a 2014 title since Ronaldo arrived in Spain in 2009. The club previously hadn’t made the CL semis since 2003. Ronaldo is a key component of Real’s marketing strategy around the globe to an estimated 450 million fans. Real is the most valuable soccer club in the world at $3.26 billion. Real’s franchise value is up nearly $2 billion over the past five years.
