Rafa Nadal, the King of Wikipedia

The review of the tennis player can be read in 131 languages and surpasses that of Bob Marley, Michael Jordan or Robert de Niro

Mallorcan Rafael Nadal reacts during a press conference. | MIQUEL BORRAS

MDB DigitalPalma08/04/2024 09:21

The Big Mac index is a study carried out by The Economist magazine since 1986 to compare the purchasing power of different countries based on the price of the McDonald's chain's star hamburger. In this report, we have applied the 'Wikipedia index' in which we have calculated the popularity of Rafael Nadal over other international stars in fields such as sport, music or cinema based on the number of languages in which each personality is listed in Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopaedia.

The results are curious and show the relevance of the Mallorcan tennis player, who stands out above past and present legends by having Wikipedia pages written in 131 languages, out of the 334 languages of the website.

In the field of sport, while it is true that the 14-time Roland Garros winner is last in the 'Big Three' of tennis - behind Roger Federer (135) and Novak Djokovick (133) - he does have more references than giants such as Michael Jordan (106), the greatest basketball player in history; boxing legend Mike Tyson (80), football star Kylian Mbappé (97); the fastest man to run the 100m sprint, Usain Bolt (116); and NBA star Lebron James (88).

Impact

Rafael Nadal is also more popular on Wikipedia than music legends such as Mick Jagger (81), the singer of The Rolling Stones; reggae legend Bob Marley (129), the chameleon-like David Bowie (113); Shakira, the queen of Latin pop (129), guitar hero Jimmy Hendrix (107) and Nirvana singer and cursed grunge poet Kurt Cobain (95).

In relation to the world of cinema, the tennis player from Manacor surpasses titans of the seventh art such as the gallant George Clooney (80), the legendary director Martin Scorsese (91) or actors of the stature of Brad Pitt and Robert de Niro (121 each), Al Pacino (119) or the multi-starred Meryl Streep (110).

Despite having reviews in almost half of the languages on Wikipedia, there are several personalities with more languages than Rafael Nadal. Some of them are: the painter Pablo Picasso (199), the former president of the United States Donald Trump (236), the pop diva Beyoncé (144), the footballers Diego Armando Maradona (140), Leo Messi (168) and Cristiano Ronaldo (160), the singer Elvis Presley (177), Pope Francis (159) and Jesus Christ, the person with the most pages in this report, with a total of 264.