International soccer icon Lionel Messi has been named as the world's most marketable athlete for 2020, reports, www.sportspromedia.com/.
The Barcelona forward and six-time Ballon d'Or winner narrowly edges out fellow soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo to take top spot in SportsPro's 2020 list of the World's 50 Most Marketable Athletes powered by Nielsen.
American basketball great LeBron James, Indian cricket captain Virat 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.
World's 50 Most Marketable Athletes powered by Nielsen - the top ten:
- 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
