Top 10 Most Talked About Athletes of 2021

Cristiano Ronaldo is the most talked about sports star online for 2021 with almost 196,000 articles published online in the last year. Onlinegambling.ca used Buzzsumo’s database to discover the top 30 athletes featured most…

By Rahul Roy

December 8, 2021

2 min read

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Laker’s LeBron James ranked in fourth position with over 81,500 articles about him. Only three other basketball players feature on the top 30 list – Kevin Durant (18), Russell Westbrook (27) and Stephen Curry (28).

See the full rankings with number of articles published online and total engagements across social media below.

Rank	Athlete	Sport	Number of Articles	Engagements
1	Cristiano Ronaldo	Soccer	195,976	112,932,160
2	Neymar Jr	Soccer	171,222	50,954,362
3	Lionel Messi	Soccer	131,080	60,643,960
4	LeBron James	Basketball	81,551	47,545,199
5	Virat Kohli	Cricket	66,913	14,794,662
6	Tom Brady	Football	60,473	23,887,639
7	Conor McGregor	Mixed Martial Arts	53,652	14,233,358
8	Sergio Ramos	Soccer	46,002	13,985,465
9	Lewis Hamilton	Formula One	43,305	9,014,060
10	Novak Djokovic	Tennis	41,264	4,756,810

11	Simone Biles	Athletics	41,130	27,730,770
12	Aaron Rodgers	Football	40,195	16,103,219
13	Harry Kane	Soccer	36,245	15,344,720
14	Tiger Woods	Golf	35,960	6,331,065
15	Tyson Fury	Boxing	35,742	11,023,103
16	Roger Federer	Tennis	32,644	4,912,543
17	Naomi Osaka	Tennis	32,576	11,364,117
18	Kevin Durant	Basketball	29,154	4,852,720
19	Floyd Mayweather	Boxing	26,963	8,305,264
20	Mike Tyson	Boxing	26,251	7,860,428
21	Serena Williams	Tennis	26,166	9,608,725
22	Rafael Nadal	Tennis	25,602	3,643,111
23	John Cena	Wrestling	25,460	4,472,115
24	MS Dhoni	Cricket	25,167	7,930,980
25	Anthony Joshua	Boxing	24,692	8,683,726
26	Russell Westbrook	Basketball	22,867	3,598,110
27	Paul Pogba	Soccer	22,420	20,070,677
28	Stephen Curry	Basketball	19,729	6,945,634
29	Kylian Mbappe	Soccer	17,926	10,850,258
30	Patrick Mahomes	Football	17,778	9,619,211

The top female athlete on the list is gymnast Simone Biles, who is ranked number eleven after a winning year at the Olympics. Her speech at the Larry Nassar trial also made international news. The only other two female athletes are tennis stars Naomi Osaka (17) and Serena Williams (21).

The list also comprises of seven soccer players, five tennis players, four boxers, three football players, two cricketers and one athlete each from the world of athletics, Formula One, golf, MMA and wresting.

Read: Top 10 most popular athletes on Twitch