NEW DELHI: Indian captain Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are occupying the top 10 positions in the world’s most marketable athletes list released by SportsPro and Powered by Nielsen. The list was released on Monday has Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bangalore at No. 3 and Rohit Sharma of Mumbai Indians at number 8th position.
International soccer icon Lionel Messi has been named as the world’s most marketable athlete for 2020. The FC Barcelona forward and six-time Ballon d’Or winner narrowly edges out fellow soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo to take top spot in the list of the World’s 50 most marketable athletes.
American basketball great LeBron James, Indian cricket captain Kohli and Canadian tennis player Bianca Andreescu round out this year’s top five, with the latter named as the top-ranked female athlete.
This year’s 50 Most Marketable (50MM) Athletes list is powered by Nielsen’s proprietary athlete marketability assessment methodology. Called the Influencer Selection and Measurement Framework, the methodology draws on vast amounts of social media data to generate an Athlete Influencer Score comprising four key data points: relevance, reach, return, and resonance.
The top 10:
Lionel Messi – Argentinian, 33, Soccer
Cristiano Ronaldo – Portuguese, 35, Soccer
LeBron James – American, 35, Basketball
Virat Kohli – Indian, 31, Cricket
Bianca Andreescu – Canadian, 20, Tennis
Neymar Jr – Brazilian, 28, Soccer
Khabib Nurmagomedov – Russian, 32, MMA
Rohit Sharma – Indian, 33, Cricket
Mohamed Salah – Egyptian, 28, Soccer
Paulo Dybala – Argentinian, 26, Soccer
The list is powered by Nielsen’s athlete marketability assessment methodology. Called the Influencer Selection and Measurement Framework, the methodology draws on vast amounts of social media data to generate an Athlete Influencer Score comprising four key data points: relevance, reach, return, and resonance.
Designed to accurately monitor social campaign effectiveness, the framework incorporates a range of performance and sponsorship-related KPIs, such as social following, content engagement, fanbase growth over time, media value, and the performance of branded versus organic content. For this list, the Instagram accounts for over 6,000 athletes from 21 sports were tracked over the last 12 months. (Image & Text courtesy: insidesport.co).
