Cristiano Ronaldo Wins Inaugural Ballon d’Or of All Time Award

Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2008 season at Manchester United has been voted the greatest Ballon d’Or-winning campaign in history, after France Football announced the result of the first Ballon d’Or of All Time (BOAT) fan vote on Wednesday 28 October 2026. The poll marked the award’s 70th anniversary and placed Lionel Messi’s 2012 season second. How the votes were sold, at one euro each with no cap, drew criticism and made the BOAT award a test of how football turns fan passion into revenue.

Manchester United confirmed the result on its website, describing a month-long public vote. Fans chose between individual winning seasons by players who had won the Ballon d’Or at least twice, Minute Mirror reported. Ronaldo’s 2008 campaign finished first, Messi’s 2012 season second and Ronaldo’s own 2017 season with Real Madrid third. It was a public vote and not an official Ballon d’Or, and no new trophy was presented.

How the vote worked

France Football, the organiser of the Ballon d’Or, ran the poll to mark the award’s 70th anniversary. It announced the winner on Wednesday 28 October, two days after the 2026 Ballon d’Or ceremony, OneFootball reported.

Unlike the traditional award, which journalists vote on, the BOAT award was decided by the public and the fan community. Ronaldo, who is 41 and plays for Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, has won the Ballon d’Or five times. Messi holds the record with eight, IANS reported.

The season fans chose

Ronaldo scored 42 goals in 49 appearances for Manchester United in 2007/08, according to IANS. Thirty-one came in the Premier League, where he finished as top scorer and won the Golden Boot, and eight came in the Champions League, where he was also top scorer. Yen reported that the tally also earned him the European Golden Shoe, and United won both competitions that season.

He scored United’s goal in a 1-1 final against Chelsea after extra time, and United won on penalties. Ronaldo collected his first Ballon d’Or at the end of 2008, aged 23, with Messi as runner-up. He became the third Portuguese winner, after Eusebio in 1965 and Luis Figo in 2000.

Messi’s 2012 year was built on volume. He scored a record 91 goals for club and country in the calendar year, Minute Mirror reported. In the 2011/12 season he scored 73 goals in 60 appearances for Barcelona, including 50 in La Liga and 14 in the Champions League, according to Yen. The result puts a season of league and Champions League wins ahead of a season of record goal tallies.

The vote drew criticism

The voting method sparked a row, especially among Messi’s fans, who argued he was more deserving for his 2012 campaign. Goal reported, citing Marca and France Football, that people could vote more than once at one euro per vote. In all, 5,009 people voted more than once: 4,665 voted two to four times, 300 voted five to nine times and 44 voted 10 to 26 times.

The final ranking therefore reflected votes cast, not the number of individual supporters who preferred each campaign, as Minute Mirror noted. Goal said France Football earned a large sum from the votes. No figure for the revenue has been reported in the coverage Brimco reviewed.

What it means for sports business

The BOAT award worked as a paid-engagement product. It turned the Ronaldo and Messi rivalry into votes at one euro each, with no trophy to produce and no match to stage. The repeat voting suggests fans will pay to settle a rivalry, and the criticism shows the reputational cost.

The weak point is trust. When votes can be repeated and paid for, a result measures spending as well as support. Publishing the rules and the repeat-voting breakdown, as France Football did, is one way to limit that damage.

For sports media and rights holders in Botswana and across Africa, the episode shows how far a global rivalry can be monetised through fan participation, and how quickly questions about transparency follow.

What happens next

Ronaldo thanked fans on Instagram, writing “Football belongs to the fans!” and adding that the award is also theirs, Goal reported. He returns to club duties with Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, where he wants to add trophies and chase the 1,000-goal milestone, OneFootball reported.