Irish unit of Ronaldo’s ‘super-agency’ showed €27.6m profit in 2019

Pre-tax profits at the Irish branch of the football "super-agency" Gestifute, which represents Cristiano Ronaldo among others, almost halved to €27.62 million in 2019.

Accounts just filed by Gestifute International Ltd show that it sustained the large drop in pre-tax profits as revenues decreased by 45 per cent from €58.9 million to €32.3 million.

The Irish firm paid €25 million during the year in dividends to its shareholders, on top of dividends of €17 million paid in 2018.

Gestifute was founded by "super-agent" Jorge Mendes who represents Ronaldo along with recently appointed Roma manager José Mourinho and a host of other international players.

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The principal activity of the Irish company is providing consultancy and marketing services to professional sportspeople and sporting organisations. The ability of clients to switch to other agents is cited as the main risk to the business.

Most-followed athlete

Forbes recently estimated Ronaldo's 2020 earnings to be about $105 million (€86 million). The Juventus player is the most-followed athlete on social media, with Instagram follower numbers topping 200 million in 2020.

Separately, Forbes estimates Mr Mendes’s 2020 earnings to be $104 million, stating that the agent had negotiated more than $1 billion in active contracts.

During last year's main transfer window, he was busy brokering the transfer of Rúben Dias, recently named the UK football writers' footballer of the year, to Manchester City for €68 million from Benfica and the move of Portuguese forward Diogo Jota from Wolves to Liverpool for €50 million.

Gestifute International Ltd had accumulated profits of €42.8 million at the end of 2019. The accounts show that the Irish firm’s tax bill for the year totalled €3.23 million.

The company’s controlling party is Start SGPS, a Portuguese-registered firm that is Mr Mendes’s holding company for his businesses in sport. The company employed five people and staff costs totalled €344,463.