Cristiano Ronaldo extends business empire to tableware and home decor

Selling tableware and home decor may not significantly boost Cristiano Ronaldo’s fortune, but it’s likely to give him less of a headache than crypto assets. The footballer has entered the designer porcelain business with historic Portuguese firm Vista Alegre, just as it marks 200 years since its founding, according to the deal announced a few weeks ago. Ronaldo, who represented Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus before moving to his current club, Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr, has acquired 10% of Vista Alegre and 30% of its Spanish subsidiary. The business collaboration also contemplates the creation of a company, with a 50% shareholding, to expand into the Asian market, capitalizing on Ronaldo’s worldwide popularity.

Vista Alegre, with its artisanal processes and artistic design, is at the antipodes of the liquid and virtual world of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which in 2022 partnered with the footballer to launch a collection of NFT (non-fungible tokens), a class of crypto asset related to the soccer star. Since then, they have marketed four collections inspired by CR7′s biography. One of the hooks to encourage a purchase is the possibility of a personal meeting with Ronaldo, who frequently promotes Binance on his social networks despite being sued by a group of investors who incurred losses. The lawsuit filed in a Florida court in late 2023 states that the footballer “promoted, assisted in, and/or actively participated in the offer and sale of unregistered securities in coordination with Binance.” The three promoters of the lawsuit, which is open to other injured parties, are claiming more than $1 billion from Ronaldo.

Not all of Ronaldo’s real estate investments have gone well either. In 2022 he sold the apartment he had bought in Trump Tower, on New York’s Fifth Avenue, for a price well below what he had paid. He had bought a 762-square-meter apartment for $18.5 million in 2015 and decided to sell four years later. Because of the Covid pandemic, among other factors, after several price reductions it sold for $11.32 million.

In addition, his project to create a luxury apartment complex in Praia Formosa in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, has been questioned over its environmental impact and is under suspicion of corruption. Associated with the Pestana Group, which operates several hotels in Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and the United States, the project involves the construction of 89 apartments 250 meters away from what is considered the last unspoiled beach in Funchal. On its website, all the homes are listed as reserved except for four, which carry prices ranging from €855,000 to €1.19 million.

Investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office

The processing of this urban development project, in an area with environmental protection, has been plagued by anomalies and is one of the operations being investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which last January indicted the president of the regional government of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque of the Social Democrat Party, and arrested three people on suspicion of corruption. The investigation is still ongoing.

Nothing, in any case, that threatens Ronaldo’s fortune. This year, Forbes magazine declared him the highest-paid athlete in the world with an annual income of $260 million. Of this, he receives a salary of $200 million from Al Nassr while his off-field business interests generate $60 million in investments as diverse as gyms, bottled water, or hair transplants.

At the end of 2023, Ronaldo entered the media business in Portugal with a group of investors who acquired the Cofina group, now renamed Medialivre. The player has become the main individual shareholder of the company, which includes television channels and the newspapers Jornal de Negócios and Correio da Manhã, which in the past had been involved in handing Ronaldo unpleasant surprises. It was Correio da Manhã that uncovered the illegal work carried out in the penthouse that he bought next to Eduardo VII Park and that he would end up demolishing at the request of the Lisbon City Council.

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