While Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are among the highest-paid footballers on the planet, one player’s estimated net worth of £15.7bn dwarfs them both.
It’s a reasonable assumption that the highest-earning footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, through their weekly wages and profitable endorsements, are also the wealthiest in the world. However, there are exceptions to this rule, particularly when you are connected to royalty. No footballer comes remotely close to earning the staggering wages that Ronaldo commands, with the 41-year-old collecting a tidy £3.42million per week from his deal with Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr.
Messi’s contract with Inter Miami is valued at £20.2m per year. Yet the multi-millionaire pair are mere specks in the financial cosmos compared with Faiq Bolkiah. The 25-year-old is of Bruneian heritage but was born in Los Angeles, United States, and is believed to be worth approximately £15.7 billion ($20bn).
He is the son of Jefri Bolkiah, a member of the Bruneian royal household and also the nephew of the Sultan of Brunei. His family ties position him to inherit a portion of the Asian royal dynasty’s £200bn wealth.
According to Forbes, Ronaldo has an estimated net worth of £908.6 million ($1.2bn), with Messi trailing slightly on £833m ($1.1bn). However, they are nowhere near Bolkiah, whose personal fortune is estimated to be seven times greater than Ronaldo and Messi’s combined.
To put that into perspective, he could buy the Dallas Cowboys NFL franchise – the world’s most valuable sports team at £10.2billion ($13.5bn) – and still have roughly £5bn left over. That’s a staggering sum.
While he ranks as the wealthiest footballer on the planet, Bolkiah failed to deliver on the pitch. The 28-year-old suffered a difficult spell in England after progressing through academy systems at Southampton, Leicester and Chelsea, but was unable to establish himself.
Southampton first scouted him aged 13, before Chelsea snapped him up. It was during a heavy loss for Southampton’s Under-16s against the Blues that Bolkiah initially attracted attention.
“At the time, Chelsea’s age group (U-16) was very, very strong. They won everything. It was the age group with Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, and a lot of top players,” Bolkiah told Mainstand.
“As a young player in England, everyone looked up to the players at Chelsea because they were the best. They won every youth tournament. We went there and lost 8-0 or 9-0, but it was one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life by far. I don’t know how but even though we lost a lot, I showed a lot of what I could do.”
Despite securing a deal with the Blues, Bolkiah failed to make an impact following his arrival at Cobham. With players such as Tammy Abraham coming through his age bracket, he departed the club in December 2015 for Leicester.
While he described his time with the Foxes as “amazing”, he failed to break into the first team and left in 2020. He subsequently signed for Portuguese side Maritimo, a move he now regrets.
“Maritimo said to me, ‘You’ll come here, you’ll play,’ so I said, ‘I just want to be here for a year. The main thing for me is I want to play.’ Obviously, that didn’t happen. I definitely regret moving there,” he said later.
“I feel like there was a lot of politics to do with it as well, why Maritimo wanted me. I didn’t feel like they were being fully honest. With the clubs in Europe, and definitely at the last club I was at in Portugal, it had [an effect]. I’ve seen it as clear as day.”
Bolkiah currently features for Thai League 1 side Ratchaburi, though remains firmly on the periphery with no prospect of World Cup involvement. During the 2025/26 season, he managed only two outings from a potential 30 for his club, yet he still believes Asia represents the right path for his career.
He said: “I never had (the thought) in my head that I would come to Asia. I sat down with my agent, my advisors and my family members, and I just said to them, ‘I can’t risk going to another club, them signing me for reasons outside of football, and not playing, wasting another year or two years’.”
His footballing career may not have unfolded as he had envisioned. Yet Bolkiah can still lay claim to the title of the world’s wealthiest footballer — and not even Ronaldo or Messi can strip him of that distinction.
