Brazil football legend Ronaldo buys US$7.8 million penthouse in Miami

[MIAMI] World Cup winner Ronaldo bought a US$7.8 million penthouse in Miami’s Bay Harbor Islands, records show, joining a growing list of football players who own trophy properties in the area.

The 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.

Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima is most commonly known among fans as Ronaldo, or in Brazil as “o fenomeno”.

“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 a limited liability company owner that traces back to Ronaldo.

Talita Pinheiro, the broker representing the buyer, declined to comment. Representatives for Ronaldo did not reply to a request for comment. 

Miami has emerged as a football capital in the United States. Fifa and FC Barcelona have opened offices in the area, and Miami will host seven World Cup games this summer.

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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 football 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 US$72 million mansion in Miami Beach in 2024.

The purchase is 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, including Alphabet co-founders Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, have all purchased property in Miami recently, with Zuckerberg’s purchase breaking a Miami-Dade County record. 

“Purchasers like that create market confidence,” Goldentayer noted. “Those buyers can live anywhere in the world and they’re choosing Miami.” BLOOMBERG