(Bloomberg) — Brazilian legend Ronaldo bought a $7.8 million penthouse in Miami’s Bay Harbor Islands, records show, joining a growing list of soccer players who own trophy properties in the area.
Ronaldo’s purchase comes after he sold his controlling stakes in Spanish club Real Valladolid last year and in Brazil’s Cruzeiro in 2024, where he started his career. A World Cup winner, Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima, is most commonly known among soccer fans as Ronaldo, or in Brazil as o fenômeno.
“Sports and athletes in Miami go hand in hand,” said Dina Goldentayer, who represented the sellers, a team of developers who completed the 41-unit condo building, Onda Residences, in 2024. Goldentayer pointed to events ranging from Formula 1 to the city’s upcoming World Cup matches.
Ronaldo was in the crowd at last weekend’s Miami Open women’s tennis final and attended the FII Priority conference last week in Miami Beach alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
The waterfront penthouse has five bedrooms, seven bathrooms and a sweeping rooftop deck with a private pool.
Goldentayer declined to comment on the identity of the buyer. Public records on the penthouse apartment, located on a man-made island in the northern part of Biscayne Bay, show an LLC owner that traces back to Ronaldo. Talita Pinheiro, the broker representing the buyer, declined to comment. Representatives for Ronaldo didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Miami has emerged as a soccer capital in the US. FIFA and FC Barcelona have opened offices in the area, and Miami will host seven World Cup games this summer. The city’s Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami, lured Lionel Messi, largely considered the world’s greatest player — a symbolic get for the rising popularity of the US league and for Miami as a soccer hub.
Inter Miami has brought other big names to South Florida — Sergio Busquets and Luis Suarez, both teammates of Messi’s at FC Barcelona, also signed to the team and followed with splashy real estate purchases. Ronaldo’s former Real Madrid teammate, David Beckham, is a partial owner of Inter Miami. Beckham bought a $72 million mansion in Miami Beach in 2024.
It’s not Ronaldo’s first association with South Florida. In 2014 he became a minority owner of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, a team in the now-extinct North American Soccer League.
Miami’s real estate market has reached new heights since the pandemic, when a wave of wealthy people from the Northeast and Midwest relocated. This year, the top end of the market has skyrocketed with a stream of high-profile billionaire buyers from California, suspected to be fleeing a proposed billionaires tax.
“Athletes love it as much as the CEOs, financiers and tech guys from California,” Goldentayer, the real estate broker said. Silicon Valley tycoons like Alphabet Inc. co-founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg have all purchased property in Miami in recent months, with Zuckerberg’s purchase breaking a Miami-Dade County record.
“Purchasers like that create market confidence,” she said. “Those buyers can live anywhere in the world and they’re choosing Miami.”
