BREAKING NEWS: Twitter’s most followed athlete, Ronaldo loses verification badge

Cristiano Ronaldo has lost his blue tick on Twitter despite being the platform’s most-followed athlete

The Portuguese superstar has 108.3m followers on Elon Musk’s social media site, but the footballer no longer has the ‘legacy verified checkmark’ which was previously used to confirm the validity of official accounts.

Twitter installed new rules which meant that a number of accounts lost their blue tick, regardless of their fame, and Ronaldo is one of those who is no longer verified, despite being the most followed footballer on the platform.

Users can pay a monthly subscription of $8 (£6.46) to sign up to Twitter Blue, which comes with the blue tick along with access to other features such as longer video uploads and an edit button.

But many have taken umbrage with Musk’s money-making tactics, and have chosen not to contribute to the billionaire’s coffers, following his $44 billion (£38.1 billion) takeover of Twitter in October 2022.