ESPN has rolled out a list of the top 100 most famous athletes in the world.
Eleven Indians are on the list which is led by Cristiano Ronaldo. Virat Kohli leads the eleven (at 11th place globally), followed by MS Dhoni (20th globally) and Rohit Sharma (30th globally). The list comprises of a total of nine Indian cricketers and Saina Nehwal (50th globally) and Sania Mirza (100th globally).
AB De Villiers is the only non-Indian cricketer on the list and finds a place at number 99.
The list has ranked athletes from around the world based on a proprietary formula that took into account three fame factors:
Search score: Which measures how often a name is searched, using Cristiano Ronaldo's score of 100 as a baseline
Endorsement dollars: The sources ranged from Forbes to ESPN contributors.
Social Media followers: The ranking used only the number from their most popular account. So if an athlete had 2 million Instagram followers but his or her other accounts had only 1 million followers, the social media score was 2 million.
Virat Kohli - 11th globally
Search score: 88
Endorsements: US$ 17.4 million
Social following: 36.9m
MS Dhoni - 20th globally
Search Score: 19
Endorsements: US$16m
Social Following: 20.5m
Rohit Sharma - 30th globally
Search Score: 20
Endorsements: US$ 12m
Social Following: 11.0m
Suresh Raina - 41st globally
Search Score: 2
Endorsements: N/A
Social Following: 13.3m
Saina Nehwal - 50th globally
Search Score: 1
Endorsements: US$ 10 million
Social Following; 7.9m
Yuvraj Singh - 57th globally
Search Score: 4
Endorsements: N/A
Social Following: 14.7m
Ravichandran Ashwin - 71st globally
Search Score: 1
Endorsements: N/A
Social Following: 8m
Harbhajan Singh - 80th globally
Search Score: 1
Endorsements: NA
Social Following: 7.9m
Gautam Gambhir - 83rd globally
Search Score: 2
Endorsements: N/A
Social Following: 7.6 m
Shikhar Dhawan - 94th globally
Search Score: 3
Endorsements: N/A
Social Following: 8.9 m
Sania Mirza - 100th globally
Search Score: 4
Endorsements: US$ 2 million
Social Following: 12.5 m
View the full list here.
