Soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo recently broke a whole list of YouTube records after launching a personal channel on the platform, becoming the fastest to breach the 1, 10, and 20 million subscriber barrier. Streamer Adin Ross believes LeBron James could challenge those records if he launched a personal YouTube channel as well.
"I do wanna say one thing. If LeBron James made a YouTube today, he'd be at 50 million in three days. Facts. I'm sorry, but it's the truth."
I hate to burst his bubble, but LeBron James would categorically not be able to achieve what Ronaldo has done on YouTube. That's not discrediting James, but the global reach of football is far greater than that of basketball. Ronaldo is also one of the most-followed humans on the planet regardless of platform, so there's no way LeBron could compete with his popularity.
For context, Ronaldo has 637 million followers on Instagram compared to LeBron's 160 million, a difference of nearly half a billion. Even on X, a platform LeBron is more active than Ronaldo on, James has 53 million followers while Ronaldo has 122.7 million.
LeBron is one of the most famous athletes in the world, but competing with soccer stars such as Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in terms of popularity is fruitless. These names ring out all over the world in a way no basketball player ever has, even including Michael Jordan. The global reach of soccer dwarves basketball, so this shouldn't be surprising.
If James were to make a YouTube channel, he'd definitely fly up the subscriber charts and break a record of his own, but it wouldn't be comparable to what Ronaldo did over the weekend on YouTube. We have a solid comparison point as well, with LeBron launching his own podcast alongside his new head coach JJ Redick earlier this year.
The 'Mind The Game' podcast instantly became one of the biggest basketball podcasts in the world, gaining 654K subscribers on YouTube for four episodes. The number isn't even comparable to what Ronaldo did with his YouTube channel.
'Mind The Game' was for pure basketball fans, which limited the audience that James could attract. A personal lifestyle LeBron channel would likely be a lot more popular, but still wouldn't come close to Ronaldo.
Michael Jordan Once Admitted LeBron James Would Become More Popular Than Him
LeBron's popularity is only comparable to the popularity Michael Jordan enjoyed during his prime, though I'd argue Jordan was still more popular than LeBron. Nonetheless, everyone knows that as time passes, newer faces become more prominent while older faces fade out.
Jordan knows that he'll eventually start fading away from people's minds as a natural process, admitting that James could be more popular than him in 20 years time .
"So when you sit there and you say I was voted the most popular athlete, it’s ironic that I’m the youngest of the three. So in essence it’s all related to who is watching now."
"If you ask 20 years from now, I’m pretty sure LeBron [James] may beat me. If you ask me, I can never give you an opinion about things like that. As an athlete, all you ever want to do is be the best athlete that you can."
In terms of the day-to-day, we hear and see James a lot more as he's an active basketball player and major media figure. Jordan is happy being in the background. As the years go by, James will likely be considered more popular, until he's replaced by someone like Victor Wembanyama or the next NBA megastar.
Related: DeMar DeRozan On LeBron James: "That MFer Was Impossible To Beat... No Other Way Around It"
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