From 400k to three million overnight: Cristiano Ronaldo just changed everything for UD Almeria without kicking a ball

There are players who change clubs, and then there’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who changes everything around a club just by showing up. 

Last week, the former Real Madrid star confirmed he’d acquired a 25% stake in UD Almeria, a club sitting third in Spain's second division, through his newly formed CR7 Sports Investments vehicle. Within 24 hours of the announcement going public, Almeria’s Instagram following had jumped from 400,000 to nearly three million.

It’s not like the club played a game or anybody scored a goal; Ronaldo had simply put his name to a piece of paper, and a Segunda Division side from the south of Spain became one of the most-followed Spanish clubs on social media overnight. That’s what 30 years of being one of the most recognisable footballers on the planet gets you.

The thing is, this was always going to happen, because it happens everywhere Ronaldo goes.

When he moved to Al Nassr in January 2023, the Saudi Pro League went from being a retirement home for journeymen to a genuine destination worth debating. Sponsors followed, broadcast deals improved, and the league’s global audience grew in ways it hadn’t in decades. He has yet to win a title there, but the attention he brought was undeniable, and the same template is now sitting in Almeria’s inbox.

The deal itself has been a long time coming, at least in Ronaldo’s own mind.

He’d been watching Almeria for a while, partly because of his relationship with club president Mohamed Al Khereiji, the Saudi businessman who played a central role in taking the five-time Ballon d’Or winner to Riyadh back in 2022. The two have stayed close, and when SMC Group acquired the Andalusian club in May 2025, the conversations about Ronaldo’s involvement started almost immediately.

“He knows Spanish football very well and understands the potential of what we’re building here, both in the first team and in the academy,” Al Khereiji told Goal, when the deal was confirmed.

The club said he’ll sit on the board of directors through CR7 Sports Investments, the new sports-focused arm of his broader CR7 SA empire, which already spans hotels, gyms, fashion and technology.

At 41, still contracted to Al Nassr through June 2027 and expected to captain Portugal at what will likely be his sixth and final World Cup this summer, he’s doing club ownership and elite-level football at the same time.

Only a few people in the sport’s history have had the energy or the ambition to pull that off.

For Almeria, the timing is everything. The club was relegated from La Liga in 2023-24, dropped into the second tier and has been rebuilding under head coach Rubi ever since.

They are third in the Liga Hypermotion table with 49 points from 28 games, four points off the automatic promotion places, chasing a return to the top flight that feels very different now that Ronaldo’s name is on the ownership papers.

The commercial leverage this brings is hard to overstate. Sponsors who’d never looked at a Segunda side are now looking. Broadcasters who’d never scheduled an Almeria game are now paying attention. The 18,331-seat Power Horse Stadium, which has never hosted a night anything like what's coming if promotion goes through, is going to feel very different next season if Rubi’s side can hold their position.

There's a version of this story where it’s simply about a billionaire, which Ronaldo became last October according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a net worth estimated at $1.4 billion, adding another asset to a growing portfolio. And that version isn’t wrong.

But it’s also incomplete, because Ronaldo’s relationship with football has never been purely transactional.

He came up the hard way, from Madeira to Sporting Lisbon to Manchester United to Real Madrid, collecting records and trophies at every stop, and the idea that he would step back from the sport the moment he stopped playing was always unlikely.

Ownership is just the next arena, and Almeria is just the next stage.