Betting and football: drug trafficking threatens Ecuador’s favourite sport | OneFootball

Besieged by assassins and match-fixing threats, football has become a high-risk sport in Ecuador. The drug trafficking violence plaguing the country has reached the fields, resulting in the murder of three professional players in less than a month.

The celebration for the Ecuadorian national team's qualification for the 2026 World Cup in North America occurred in a bittersweet context, as the country records the worst homicide peak in its history.

A week ago, midfielder Jonathan González, 31, was at his home in the troubled coastal region of Esmeraldas, on the border with Colombia. Men on motorcycles shot him in the head after he refused to fix a match.

“Speedy,” as he was known, “was a healthy kid and died because of betting,” Oswaldo Batallas, an official of the 22 de Julio club in Ecuador's second division, where González played, told AFP.

Pressure to Fix Matches

People close to him, speaking anonymously, say that nine days before the crime, mafias linked to online betting asked González to lose a match. The game ended in a draw.

“The bettors are intermediaries, they are directed by criminal groups and tell you which game to lose,” says a former football player.

Two weeks before the murder, assailants shot at González's car, and his mother received threats by phone.

Bettors and Sponsors

A UN report, which includes Ecuador, warns about the interference of organized crime in football and other sports used to launder money and move profits. Annually, up to 1.7 trillion dollars (R$ 9 trillion at the current exchange rate) are moved in illicit bets attributed to mafias worldwide.

“We cannot conceive that betting houses are the first line of sponsorship for a club,” says Carlos Tenorio, a former Ecuador national team player and president of the local athletes' union.

In the country, a dozen teams and the professional football league are sponsored by online betting companies, a common practice in Latin America.

Nine days before González's murder, players Maicol Valencia and Leandro Yépez were killed. The athletes from the Exapromo Costa club were in a hotel in Manta when armed men opened fire. Valencia died on the spot, and Yépez later died in the hospital.

The police informed AFP that the three crimes are under confidential investigation.

Fleeing Out of Fear

Security expert Fernando Carrión says that football is a lure for drug trafficking because it is a mass sport in Ecuador. And illicit betting “becomes an interesting mechanism to launder resources because there is little control.”

A preliminary report from the Ecuadorian league detected manipulations in at least five second-division matches this year.

One of the teams involved is Chacaritas, Yépez's former club in 2019, where an official declared that they were offered 20,000 dollars (almost R$ 107,000) to lose a match.

In 2024, a video shows several players from the club lying on the ground while being threatened with guns. According to local media, the mafias extorted them to lose matches with bets.

Easy Prey

According to experts, mafias target second-division teams that are easy prey due to their low salaries.

In 2023, the then U.S. ambassador to Quito, Michael Fitzpatrick, stated that drug traffickers use clubs to launder money.

Faced with the persecution of these groups, the president of the 22 de Julio club left Esmeraldas. He performs his role virtually and in hiding.

Amid the violence, striker Enner Valencia, the top scorer in Ecuador's national team history with 47 goals, revealed in 2023 his fear of returning to Emelec.

“I would love to go to Emelec (…) but I wouldn't take my family to Ecuador and wouldn't go to Ecuador now,” he said at the time.

A year earlier, Elsy Valencia, the athlete's sister, was rescued by police after being kidnapped for a week.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.