Cristiano Ronaldo: Football's First Billionaire Player (from Good Bad Billionaire)
episodePreviously titled “Introducing… Cristiano Ronaldo: Football's First Billionaire Player” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is Cristiano Ronaldo's background and early life?
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Aleppo. Urban legend. Yes, it's a lovely summer now, when the taste of life is the best of all. Mind like a young girl on a field field, when you can play. Just enjoy and take part in the fun. What is on?
Eloveena. Täyttä eloa.
It's 2009, a cold January morning. A 23-year-old grips the wheel of a two-day-old $300,000 Ferrari. Overhead, aeroplanes are coming into land at Manchester Airport.
He zooms down into a tunnel and then he smashes into the wall. The front of his sports car crumples and the windscreen smashes.
He gets out of the car, his tall body ripped with muscles. The car is totaled, but he's OK, with barely a hair out of place on his perfectly quaffed head.
He jumps into a Bentley that was following right behind him. There's no time to lose. He has to be on the pitch within the hour.
Because this footballer never misses training and it's his dedication, obsession some would say, that will make him a billionaire.
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion. My name is Zing Zing and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.
And on this episode, we've got a billionaire who is actually the subject of several requests from listeners.
Yeah, a few of you have requested this one, including Mark, who emailed to say, I just wanted to say how much I enjoy listening to the podcast.
How did Ronaldo's career begin at Sporting CP?
Thank you, Mark. It's consistently interesting, well-researched and very engaging. As a suggestion for a future episode, I'd love to hear the story of Cristiano Ronaldo. He's a slightly different kind of billionaire, a genuine rags to riches story. Be fascinating to see him through the good, bad or just another billionaire lens. He said, I really think it will be kind of tough. Interesting.
Well, if you're a football fan, whether he's good or bad probably depends on whether he's playing for your side or not.
Yeah.
I mean, the closest I can come to describing it as someone who doesn't watch tons of football is like it's like watching someone dance ballet next to someone who can't dance at all.
Yeah. Yeah, no, he had a fleet of foot for sure. He's got dozens of world records, including the most goals scored in international football, 968 at the time of recording, and the most international caps, 226 for his home country of Portugal.
Now 41 years old, he was declared a billionaire just last year worth $1.4 billion.
Now that puts him in a very elite club of billionaire athletes, which you can actually count on your fingers. By many metrics, he's the most famous athlete, some would say, in the world. I'm sure Lionel Messi might have something to say about that.
Well, Ronaldo is also regularly described as arrogant, as narcissistic, and his behaviour both on and off the pitch is very rarely out of the headlines. So let's try to answer Mark's question. And to do that, we'll have to go back to the beginning of Ronaldo's story.
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Evero was born in 1985 in Madeira, a small Portuguese island out in the Atlantic Ocean. His mother, Dolores, was a cook and a cleaner. His father, Denis, worked as a municipal gardener.
Denis had been a soldier at war and he struggled with depression and alcoholism. Ronaldo was their fourth child and he was an accident. His mother actually considered having an abortion and she's Catholic and very religious, which just goes to show that they were in pretty dire straits at the time. He was raised in poverty. And Ronaldo has said, I was brought up with nothing. I had no toys, no Christmas presents.
What were the challenges Ronaldo faced during his early career?
I shared a room with my brother and two sisters and my parents slept in the other. And him and his siblings would apparently often wait outside a local McDonald's late at night when hungry, hoping the workers might sneak them leftover Big Macs.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Cristiano Ronaldo's background and early life?
0:00–2:22
2
How did Ronaldo's career begin at Sporting CP?
2:22–4:25
3
What were the challenges Ronaldo faced during his early career?
4:25–6:32
4
How did Ronaldo become a global superstar at Manchester United?
6:32–8:10
5
What impact did Ronaldo have on football's business landscape?
8:10–10:41
6
How did Ronaldo's move to Real Madrid change his career?
10:41–13:19
7
What controversies have surrounded Ronaldo throughout his career?
13:19–15:34
8
What does the future hold for Ronaldo after his move to Al Nassr?
15:34–46:37
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Football Daily
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