Superstar effect: Ronaldo joining Juventus goes way beyond soccer

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Five-time Ballon d'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo joined Serie A’s Juventus from Real Madrid after signing a 117-million-US-dollar deal. The club will pay him some 140 million dollars for four years. However, his transfer was way more significant than the two numbers.

According to Tencent Sports, Real Madrid took a hit with their Twitter followers. Before the transfer, the club had 31.97 million followers but witnessed a sharp decrease of nearly one million in 24 hours after the deal. The exodus is still going as many fans have been expressing their sadness.

Meet Turin's favorite man: Cristiano Ronaldo. /VCG Photo

By contrast, Juventus made a good harvest with social media platforms. The club saw the number of followers rise on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with as much as 1.4 million new followers on Instagram. The Juventus Instagram account finally reached more than 10 million fans and the announcement post sharing the Ronaldo news received more than three million likes.

Juventus' club share price has also grown by 35 percent and continues to rise. After the official announcement, the benefits brought by the growth already surpassed the transfer fees paid by the team.

#7 Jersey of Ronaldo is now one of the most popular items among Juventus fans. /VCG Photo

Ronaldo’s jerseys became so popular that the flooding of passionate buyers led to the team's online store crashing and long queues outside brick and mortar stores. According to Yahoo Sport, Juventus and Adidas have sold 520,000 jerseys. By contrast, the total sales of Juventus jerseys in 2016 was simply 850,000.

Ronaldo will appear in Turin at a press conference on July 16. Spain’s AS reported that Juventus will stick to their tradition and won’t host any special event for the Portuguese superstar.