Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli might not be setting any new records on the field with the bat lately, but off the field, his popularity and following is breaking many new benchmarks. This fact becomes clearer as he became the first Indian and Asian celebrity to reach 150 million followers on Instagram.
Kohli’s fan following and fame rival that of former Indian cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni. Virat Kohli also has 47 million followers on his official Facebook page and another 43.4 million fanatics follow him on Twitter.
On Friday, Kohli became the first cricketer, first Indian as well as the first Asian to cross the 150 million followers landmark on Instagram. In the overall list, Kohli is the fourth sporting celebrity to reach the 150 million mark on the photo-blogging portal.
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Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo tops the chart with 337 million followers, while Argentinian Lionel Messi and Brazil's Neymar stand second and third in the list with 260 million, 160 million followers respectively.
Kohli’s record number of followers is trailblazing given the incongruity in the numbers of followers and fans football has over the world and cricket has worldwide.
Apart from this, as per Hopper HQ, Kohli is also the highest-paid celebrity in India when it comes to earning from Instagram. The superstar cricketer reportedly charges INR 5 crore per sponsored post on the platform.
He had recently left behind Ranveer Singh and Akshay Kumar to retain the top spot in India's most valuable celeb list. According to the Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2020 by Duff & Phelps, the Indian skipper was reportedly crowned as India's most valuable celebrity with a brand value of $237.7 million.
Kohli is unarguably the highest-earning cricketer in the world (considering all sources of income).
Virat makes Rs. 17 crore from Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Rs. 7.5 crore from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). He also makes quite a lot from the various products and services he endorses with Colgate, Google, Hero, Puma, Vicks, and MRF tyres being the major ones.
(IANS/timesnownews inputs)
