Ronaldo celebrates reaching 200m Instagram followers... but over 50m are 'fake'

Ronaldo has uploaded a celebratory video to Instagram to mark reaching 200million followers... but a study suggests that over 50million of them are FAKE.

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It also describes 18.7 percent of his followers as "suspicious accounts", with a further 6.4 percent tarnished as "mass followers" accounts.

HypeAuditor, a site that analyses Instagram and YouTube influencers, describe "mass followers" accounts as those which have followings of over 1500, while using automatic tools to follow/unfollow.

These accounts do not see influencers' posts.

Instagram bots, as you'd expect, are defined as "suspicious accounts" - as well as those that use specific services for likes and comments - as well as people who purchase followers.

This therefore means that 25.1 percent of Ronaldo's followers are illegitimate - that's a staggering 50.2million accounts.

The report also documents the primary interests of those that do follow him - with surprising findings.

Under half [49%] of Ronaldo's followers are described as being interested in sport - with more preferring music and even beauty and fashion.

The report found 56 percent most into their music - and 62 percent beauty and fashion.

And the 34-year-old unsurprisingly has a primarily male following [72%] - with just 28% being women.

In terms of their locations, far more of his followers come from India than any other specific countries.

The 22 percent that come from India stand a whopping 15 percent above those that hail from Iran.

Three percent of his followers come from the Madrid - the city to which he gave his best years as a superstar for Real Madrid between 2009 and 2018.

A huge 44 percent are primarily English speakers, with Persian and Arabic the joint-second most common language of Ronaldo's followers with nine percent each.

It was revealed in November that Ronaldo earns more per Instagram post, an eyewatering £780k, than any other user in the world.

Lionel Messi stood way back in second place at £518k-per-post, with celebrity Kendall Jenner third with £489k-per-post.

According to an ICMP audit back in November, Ronaldo's former Real Madrid team-mate Toni Kroos had a higher percentage of "fake followers" than any other Instagram user - with a staggering 51 percent of his at the time said to not be real.