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Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have spent two decades driving each other toward excellence, and now the Inter Miami star has drawn level with his longtime rival to become soccer's second billionaire.
Ronaldo's fortune was first reported by Bloomberg to have crossed the $1 billion mark in autumn 2025, largely fueled by his lucrative stint in Saudi Arabia, where a world-record $235 million annual salary from Al Nassr comes entirely tax free.
According to Forbes in 2026, the Portuguese star is projected to earn $300 million this year in total. That makes him the highest-paid athlete on the planet, underpinning a net worth of $1.2 billion.
Yet Messi has now joined the billionaire club as well. Forbes places his net worth at $1.1 billion, even though his Inter Miami contract pays him significantly less than Ronaldo earns.
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In 2026, Messi remains Major League Soccer's top earner, with a guaranteed salary of $28.3 million. Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas disclosed to Bloomberg in March that, when factoring in additional arrangements such as his equity stake in the club, Messi takes home as much as $80 million per year.
Forbes notes that Messi's billion-dollar fortune has been built "primarily from cash accumulation and appreciation throughout his career," along with team equity embedded in his contract. He would have reached billionaire status sooner had he opted to join Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia rather than the U.S., a decision he faced when his Paris Saint-Germain deal expired in 2023.
Messi and Ronaldo are the first active players in team sports to reach billionaire status. Other soccer figures have only crossed that threshold after hanging up their boots. Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham was labeled a billionaire last month—becoming the first British sportsman to achieve the milestone—13 years after retiring from the game, driven by post-career business ventures.
Former Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini has accumulated nearly all of his reported $14 billion net worth in retirement, having pivoted from soccer to biochemical entrepreneurship after leaving professional sport in 2019. Meanwhile, estimated valuations for AxisStars, the agency co-founded by retired Premier League striker Louis Saha, surpassed $5 billion in 2025.
Who Will be Soccer's Next Billionaire?
Among players still active, Real Madrid sensation Kylian Mbappé appears the most likely candidate to become soccer's next billionaire. The Frenchman already ranks as the 12th highest-paid athlete globally in 2026—and fourth within soccer, per Forbes—with an expected haul of $95 million this year alone.
At just 27 years old, his net worth is estimated at roughly $250 million. In a sport that commands the world's largest following and continues to grow in financial scale, with careers and earning windows expanding, he could remain one of the global faces of the game for another decade or more.
This generation was once framed as a Messi-Ronaldo-style rivalry between Mbappé and Erling Haaland. But while Haaland remains a formidable competitor on the field, he is barely two years younger and holds a fortune estimated at roughly one-third the size.