The most popular athletes on social media

An updated graph showing the most popular athletes on Facebook and Twitter has sprung several surprises, with the likes of Brazil star Kaka featuring ahead of global superstar David Beckham.

The revelations unsurprisingly see Ballon d'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo sitting pretty at the top of the table with almost 140 million combined Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Kaka, who plays for newly-formed MLS outfit Orlando City, finds himself in front of the aforementioned Beckham most likely due to the amount of fanatical supporters he has from South America.

Football is the dominant sport on the list with nine professionals featuring, while basketball stars LeBron James (40m), Michael Jordan (32m) and Kobe Bryant (25m) are positioned in the second most popular sport.

Also including in the list are a trio of tennis stars; Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, with the latter being the sole female representative out of 17 athletes.