Ronaldo's £106m pay bonanza

Cristiano Ronaldo is set to earn £106 million from his six-year deal at Real Madrid, with a mind-boggling final salary of £556,000-a-week.
The Portuguese star is on the verge of a move to the Bernabeu after Manchester United accepted a world record £80m bid for him on Thursday.

He will discuss a contract with the Spanish giants when he returns from holiday in Los Angeles, and will land the biggest contract in football history.
Real are expected to offer a structured deal starting at £183,000-a-week, but with a 25 per cent rise every season seeing his pay soar above half a million pounds every week in the final year of his contract.

Based on current exchange rates, Ronaldo's will be the fifth-largest contract in sports history behind four baseball deals.

The biggest belongs to Alex Rodriguez, who signed a 10-year, $275m (£167m) deal with the New York Yankees in 2008, equating to an average annual salary of £16.7m; slightly less than Ronaldo.

Rodriguez's previous $252m (£153m) contract with the Texas Rangers comes in at number two, while A-Rod's Yankees team-mates Derek Jeter ($189/10 years) and Mark Teixeira ($180m/eight years) both exceed Ronaldo, whose likely £106m contract is worth $174m.

Football's highest earner is David Beckham, who rakes in £27m per year, but only £4m comes from his club LA Galaxy; the rest is sponsorship and merchandising.

Ronaldo was fourth on a recently-published France Football list of the sport's highest earners behind Beckham, Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho, but he can expect his £15.5m total earnings from 2008 to increase significantly following his move to Madrid.

Ronaldo's possible £556,000-a-week wage in the last year of his contract works out at:

£79,428 a day

£3,309 an hour

£55 a minute

92p per second

Or, if Real Madrid play two games in a week:

£51.48 per second on the pitch.

What can Ronaldo buy with his total £106m Real Madrid contract?

- A Big Mac for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom.

- 530 new Ferrari 599 GTBs, like the one he wrote off in a crash earlier this year.

- Himself, with enough change for Carlos Tevez.

- Newcastle United Football Club.

- 588,000 hours in a tanning salon.

- 34,754,098 tubes of Brylcreem wet look hair gel.

- 42,400 ceiling mirrors.

- The most expensive house in Los Angeles, which belongs to TV producer Aaron Spelling, a three-story mansion with 56,500 square feet of space and a 4.6 acre estate.

- 163,077 bottles of Cristal champagne for himself and Paris Hilton at Hollywood nightspot My House.

- 26,500,000 inflatable donkeys.

- 10,610,610 pairs of Cristiano Ronaldo pyjamas.

- 706,666,667 telephone votes for Cristiano Ronaldo as Overseas Sports Personality of 2009.

Cristiano Ronaldo is set to earn £106 million from his six-year deal at Real Madrid, with a mind-boggling final salary of £556,000-a-week.
The Portuguese star is on the verge of a move to the Bernabeu after Manchester United accepted a world record £80m bid for him on Thursday.

He will discuss a contract with the Spanish giants when he returns from holiday in Los Angeles, and will land the biggest contract in football history.