Sports Law 2024 Comparisons

Doping is not yet considered as a criminal offence by Ecuadorian criminal law (Código Orgánico Integral Penal). The only substances on the WADA prohibited substances list that are considered as criminal offences are all of the “social” drugs, for example:

• “dope” – illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin; and
• fentanyl.

The national anti-doping agency in Ecuador is UNADE (Unidad Nacional Antidopaje del Ecuador) with jurisdiction to impose sanctions in case of doping in sports. UNADE is recognised by WADA, and they are completely autonomous to act in all the cases related to WADA. Besides the jurisdiction of UNADE in Ecuador, every Ecuadorian sports federation is obliged to include in their by-laws the recognition of WADA for international purposes and UNADE for national purposes. Ecuadorian sports law (Ley del Deporte, Educación Físico y Recreación de Ecuador) also includes the recognition and jurisdiction of WADA as an international institution that regulates the entirety of doping.

In Ecuador, only the football professional league and the Ecuadorian Football Federation have drafted rules regarding the possibility of match-fixing in football because not even Ecuadorian sports law mentions anything about match-fixing in sports. In every Ecuadorian sports federation, a sanction is obliged to be included for “misconduct and offence to sports integrity” and in those cases, the athlete, club, or anyone related to sports could receive a disciplinary sanction according to the Disciplinary Code of the particular federation.

In the case of professional football, the firm had an important case in 2023 related to match-fixing and betting on sports against a person’s own club. In that situation, Club Libertad FC received a sanction by the Disciplinary Committee of LigaPro and they will start the 2024 tournament with four points deducted and a fine of USD30,000.

In Ecuador there is a new provision that prohibited the promotion of betting on sports but such betting is not illegal so there is no particular legislation that prohibits betting on sports and in line with the particular case of “misconduct and offence to sports integrity” there have been many disciplinary sanctions for betting on sports that have been treated as offences to sports integrity. The Ecuadorian Football Professional League is the first institution in Ecuadorian sports to lead the way and they have prohibited betting on sports because of the landmark case of Libertad FC in 2023. LigaPro have created a new department (Integrity Department) that will deal with all the situations related to betting on sports and, by December 2023, LigaPro accepted the petition to prohibit all betting on sports by players and board members. As mentioned, in the last case of betting on sports, Club Libertad FC received a sanction by the Disciplinary Committee of LigaPro and they will start the 2024 tournament with a deduction of four points and an economic fine of USD30,000. In addition, the player Milton Bolaños, from Libertad FC, received a two-year suspension from playing football.

In Ecuador, disciplinary proceedings are in place in every national sports federation and each set has the competence to impose a sanction on any of the affiliated members. The National Sports Federation should use their own Disciplinary Committee or Ethics Committee, such as in LigaPro or in the Ecuadorian Football Federation, but most sports in Ecuador do not rely on such divisions.

With that on mind, the author can proceed to detail a disciplinary proceeding for doping, integrity or betting offences. First, the Disciplinary Committee of the National Sports Federation should receive a notification of any misconduct by the affiliated members to start a disciplinary proceeding. After that, the Disciplinary Committee would notify the affiliated members with the start of a disciplinary proceeding so the person can defend and send all the documents to protect his/her interests. When the affiliated members send his or her legal defence, the Disciplinary Committee will summon a hearing where the parties can mention their allegations to take a final decision. The decision can be appealed by any of the parties. On a case the author manages, he presented a claim against the Ethics Committee of the Ecuadorian Football Federation against investigating the possibility of match-fixing on a match for the third division of Ecuador, and the firm is still waiting for the decision.

Key sports-related rights are the naming right of the stadiums, ticketing and the presentation night of the team. This happens every year and, for at least the last five years, a lot of attention has been gained by the sponsors and supporters. It has grown to be internationally attractive to present international singers, and former football stars such as Carlos Tévez, Diego Forlan, Javier Mascherano, Allesandro Del Piero, and Andrea Pirlo. Ticket sales are also highlighted in Ecuador because there is still an important culture of going to the stadium during the weekend, but it has a couple of problems that need to be solved, such as violence in the stadiums, illegal ticket sales and other criminality.

There are people that use the context of “supporters” to commit all kinds of violence in a stadium and to make profit out of illegal ticket sales that, in a lot of cases, is negotiated with criminal gangs that buy the entire ticketing to proceed with the sales outside the stadium and with a huge increase of the amount. This year, the Ecuador Professional Football League (LigaPro) is including a new system for identification of the supporters to lose the previous anonymousness. Online sales have put a stop to the common illegal practices.

Sponsors are very important for sports in Ecuador, especially for football. Each Olympic year is also of great importance for the sponsors, as they try to anticipate and negotiate with possible Olympic medallists. The most important aspect for a sponsor in Ecuador is to be related to a national brand and in football you have many options. Sponsors try to connect with the principals of sports.

In Ecuador, there is a very interesting key point to attract investors by deducting taxes at the end of the tax year. The deduction is 150% of the amount spent on the sponsor, so, for example, if an investor spends USD100,000 on a sports qualified project, the following year the investor will deduct USD250,000 from the payment of taxes.

Key terms of a standard contract between sponsors and sports rights-holders are:

• parties;
• duration;
• objective;
• goals;
• limits;
• prohibitions;
• obligations by the sport’s right-holder and the sponsors;
• compliance of sports marketing;
• ambush marketing;
• economic obligations; and
• alternative dispute resolution.

Broadcasters in Ecuador have contracts with the National Sports Federation, but, for the Professional Football League, the negotiation was between the broadcaster and LigaPro. In other sports broadcasting is not possible because it does not generate income as in professional football. So, for broadcasting, the author can only mention the Professional Football League and the negotiation would be conducted by LigaPro, the league of all professional clubs in Ecuador (“Serie A” and “Serie B” – the two Series of Primera Categoría in Ecuadorian football, Serie A being the top level).

For the Ecuador Professional Football League, the broadcaster signs a contract for around USD30 million to be divided amongst all the clubs in Ecuador (Serie A and Serie B). LigaPro have included all the legal protection by the marketing department to protect the broadcaster rights and the income generated by the sale of TV rights.

Sports events are organised in Ecuador by the stake holders determined by Ecuadorian sports law such as national leagues or associations, regional leagues or associations, regional sports federations and the National Sports Federation. In the case that a third person organises a sports event, they will need the authorisation of the City and of the National Sports Federation. The control over the sports event is taken by the National Sports Federation but they will mainly work with a civil contract to protect interests. Sports events in Ecuador are typically organised and managed by the organisers and controlled by them with the enforceability given by the National Sports Federation and the City where the event takes place. Participation by athletes and fans will depend on the event, if it is a national event with a lot of interest by the sport and if the event counts for the national or international ranking.

There are no specific legal documents that establish the liability for sports events so it will be determined be the contract signed between the organisers, the owner of the event and the City host. In that case, liability will be limited by the Ecuadorian Civil Code and the contract signed by the parties, but there have been many cases of tournaments where no liability has been established in case of injury while competing, so unfortunately liability is not correctly drafted in the Ecuadorian sports law.

The liability of the athletes to the spectators is determined by the Disciplinary Code of the National Sports Federation and the sanction is established through a disciplinary process but not by an individual code of sports liabilities and, in the same way, violence and disorder are controlled by the National Sports Federation with the support of the hosting City, according to Articles 156 and 157 of the Ecuadorian Sports Law, and complete protection must be given by the National Police Department. In the case that the National Sports Federation does not include a Disciplinary Code, then the hosting city will be in charge of protecting the spectators from violence and disorder.

In the Ecuadorian legal system, the only legal structure allowed for sporting bodies is a civil non-profit association. Sporting bodies in Ecuador cannot sell shares or go to the stock market, so everything needs to be reinvested in their projects. Hence, the structure of a club is very limited and depends a lot on sponsorship and broadcasting rights because the Ecuadorian legal system does not allow investors in Ecuadorian sports clubs even though, in the last few years, that has changed by control of clubs being assumed by some legal technicalities.

For professional football clubs, the structure, according to the Ecuadorian Sports Law, is of a professional club that includes LigaPro and the Ecuadorian Football Federation, but there are other kinds of structures such as:

• amateur sports clubs;
• high-performance sports clubs;
• professional sports clubs; and
• adapted or Paralympic sports clubs.

All clubs in Ecuador start as amateur sports clubs (for every sport excluding professional football) and high-performance sports clubs are for clubs with Olympic or semi-professional athletes.

There are no specific sport-related corporate governance codes but according to the Ecuadorian Sports Law, sporting clubs need to comply with the election process and the members of the board should comply with a programme given by the Ecuadorian Sports Minister, yet in reality that has never happened. The Ecuadorian Sports Minister is in charge of applying the rules of the registration of the club’s board and if the process is incorrect, the club will not be able to register the board, thereby having consequences with the National Sports Federation that could ultimately result in losing affiliation.

In the case that the National Sports Federation or sporting club receives public funds, the board must respond appropriately with respect to the resources received by the government. The request for any person who is willing to become part of a board for a certain club or the National Sports Federation is very basic:

• being Ecuadorian;
• being at least 18 years old; and
• being a member of the relevant sports institution.

However, it is not necessary to be a professional or even have practised the particular sport. In case of insolvency of a sports organisation, sanctions will depend on the by-laws of the National Sports Federation and, once again, professional football is the only Ecuadorian sport with such disposition whereby you will be sanctioned with points deductions or losing your affiliation in case of insolvency or not complying with a judicial decision.

Sports are funded by the Ecuadorian Sports Minister and Minister of Finance according to Article 130 of the Ecuadorian Sports Law. In order to receive resources of the central government, the National Sports Federation needs to go through a process to determine the good use of national resources, including sports benefits, the social impact of the sport on society and future development. The National Sports Federation that develops amateur sports or professional sports will have to fulfil all those requirements. Additionally, the National Sports Federation can obtain its own resources by commercially exploiting the business of sports by organising sports events, ticket sales, broadcasting, and summer camps.

In the last three years there has been a new legal disposition for investing in sports because the last two Ecuadorian governments had no budget to construct infrastructure or to prepare athletes for their competitions. This new legal disposition is called Double Deduction for investments in sports and it has been developed to help athletes, clubs and sport in general with private investors that can receive a Double Deduction of the amount spent at the time of tax payment. So it is necessary for athletes and clubs to develop a project with the inclusion of the amount to be spent and companies can use that qualified project to obtain a tax benefit after the investment.

Trade marks are registered in Ecuador through SENADI (Servicio Nacional de Derechos Intelectuales) which is the institution in charge of all intellectual aspects in the country. First you have to start with a database search to know if there might be a similar or identical brand already registered. If there is no problem encountered to register the mark, you have to proceed to fill in the correct form in order to select the specific product or service you want to protect with your mark (name and logo). The process takes around six to eight months until a final decision is reached conceding or rejecting the filing. If the mark is conceded, the title will be given in the next six months.

In Ecuador it is forbidden to register any mark similar or identical to a mark already registered or any mark that is considered immoral or that attempts to defile good practices. The advantage of the registration of a mark is the economic income that can be produced through commercial negotiations between sporting clubs with companies interested in exploiting economic agreements. For example, Barcelona Sporting Club have their own ice cream with a leading ice cream company of Ecuador made thanks to the commercial agreement between the two institutions.

In the same way as trade marks, copyright and database rights are protected by the Ecuadorian Law of Social Economy of Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation through SENADI. The protection is conceded once you request the filing and register at SENADI. The most common way to demand and protect your copyright is by sending cease and desist letters to the offenders. Sadly, in Ecuador there are no considerable cases relating to copyright and database rights linking to football.

In Ecuador the legal recognition for image rights is entrusted with the Ecuadorian Law of Social Economy of Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation and it is very usual to see Ecuadorian clubs including image rights clauses with national and international athletes, mainly in professional football. The situation is that, besides including image rights clauses, clubs do not register or protect the image rights of each athlete at SENADI so those image rights are unprotected and open to be commercially exploited by any third-party company. Ideally, each professional club would protect the image rights of each player in order to have them registered with SENADI and, therefore, be able to use such rights themselves.

Sport bodies and athletes need to draft IP licensing contracts between clubs or athletes with any potential trade mark that may be interested in forming an agreement. In order to exploit any intellectual property, you have to comply with the Ecuadorian Law of Social Economy of Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation and protect your IP at SENADI. The only restrictions for assigning IP rights to third parties is to draft a contract with specific clauses for the use of IP rights, register it at SENADI and obtain the licence agreement from SENADI authorising the use of the IP rights.

Sports data in Ecuador is still not completely developed for the use of sports bodies or stakeholders so the only cases where sports data can be found to be in use are with certain companies that use electronic mail or financial information to promote certain products or services. The sports data of the athlete is basically used within professional football and only to know the data of the football player to evaluate his/her performance. In 2024, more will be seen regarding sports data related to spectator data because the Ecuadorian Professional Football League will introduce the “FAN ID” which will have an impact on the data of the spectator and can be potentially used for commercial purposes.

Data protection law in Ecuador is very recent and it has never been involved in sports so there are no cases related to sports considering athletes, clubs, sporting bodies, spectators or fans.

The National Court System in Ecuador has a relegated role for disputes concerning sports bodies because of the delayed processes, the lack of specific sports law knowledge, corruption and many other concerns about the national judicial system. Instead, each National Sports Federation has the competence to create an independent dispute resolution chamber to decide on topics related to sports law, such as labour contracts, contractual relationships with clubs, training compensation, and other topics. It is not necessary to exhaust the national judicial system to arouse a claim to a dispute resolution chamber of the National Sports Federation. In the end, every sporting body prefers to go to each dispute resolution chamber of the sport in order to obtain justice rather than through the national judicial system.

Arbitration has gained a lot of attention lately because of the agility, the lack of trust of the regular judicial system and the possibility to obtain quick results in certain legal areas. In Ecuador, the two most recognised arbitration centres are in Guayaquil and Quito but there is at least one in each of the most important cities of Ecuador. According to the Ecuadorian Sports Law, arbitration is recognised by the sports system, but the problem is that an arbitration chamber for sports is not included. The only sport that has implemented arbitration is football and only because of the request by FIFA. All other sports in Ecuador could possibly include it via the Ecuadorian Sports Law but is not generally included so far.

The power of the sports governing bodies in Ecuador to enforce sporting or financial sanctions is established in the statutes approved by the affiliated members and by the Ecuadorian Sports Law. The power to enforce sanctions by the sports governing bodies is included in the statutes and detailed in every sport’s Disciplinary Code. The autonomy given to each sport’s governing body is provided by the International Sports Federation and accepted by the Ecuadorian Sports Minister. In the event that a party is willing to appeal a decision, they can appeal before the Appeal Tribunal of the same sports federation or present an appeal process against the International Sports Federation or TAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport), with both accepted by the Ecuadorian Sports Law.

Relationships between sports organisations and players are usually handled in a very informal way as many clubs’ owners do not like to argue with agencies or they prefer to work with a particular agent and, with that, a lot of the relationships suffer with bad communication. This manner of handling relationships with players, where most of the club owners prefer to skip any communication with agencies to save some money on the contract, is not in everyone’s best interests.

Again, in Ecuador the only professional sport is football so its legal obligation is to employ football players, and, therefore, football players are the only kind of athlete that must be employed by any club. Most of the contracts for players include labour law clauses and just a few sports law clauses because in Ecuador, very often, a single template of contract, used for multiple purposes, is all that is ever seen. Salary caps are not enforced in Ecuador; there is only a minimum income for a professional player. It is not possible to make a list of particular considerations of player contracts because there are a lot of mistakes in the contracts, but to be as precise as possible, the author would say that buy-out clauses are the clauses with the most usual mistakes during drafting, making it very complicated to negotiate for an international transfer.

Rules for employers and employees in Ecuador only apply to football, in terms of sports. The rest of the sports are not obliged to sign a labour contract with the athlete so there is no relationship of employer and employee. The most well-known cases are the ones where professional football clubs do not register the labour contracts as they should according to the rules governing employer and employee, and then problems arise regarding the competence to decide within labour disputes. Another problem that arises with the rules of employer and employee is in relation to the documents of payment justification for payment roles. Payment roles are necessary to justify the payment of the player’s salary and if those documents are not signed by the player, professional football clubs can be sanctioned with points deductions.

There is no such thing as a special visa for foreign athletes. The only visa a foreign athlete needs is a labour permission visa given by the Foreign Minister and that is an obligation only for professional football because any other athlete that comes to Ecuador would not be able to practise professionally.

For football, the capping number of foreign athletes is limited by the Competition Rules of LigaPro in which it is limited to eight players. In the tournaments organised by the Ecuadorian Football Federation, the capping number of foreign players is also limited in the Competition Rules, but it will depend on the kind of tournament. Finally, there is no relevant visa restriction for foreign athletes but there are multiple benefits in terms of migration for athletes that are born in the Andean Community (Perú, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile).

Esports in Ecuador has grown considerably, lately, especially with teenagers. This kind of growth has received the attention of important companies which have investments as sponsors of major events.

Sadly, the development of esports has not been followed by the development of a legal system to protect this industry and the parties involved. Without a legal system, it is not possible to comment on any relevant specifics for esports and, as a matter of fact, esports are not even considered as actual sports by the Ecuadorian Sports Law. For the Ecuadorian Olympic Committee, esports are part of the sporting system because of a request by the International Olympic Committee as well as every National Sports Federation.

The women’s sport landscape in Ecuador is limited to football. All other sports are not considered professional, so there is no obligation to sign a labour contract between clubs and female athletes. The problem is that even in football, there is no obligation to sign labour contracts with most of the players and, besides, the professional tournament of Female Football only lasts three months so the contracts at most will last for three months and the rest of the year the club will not have the obligation to pay.

At the beginning of the year, the Law of Equality for Salaries was approved and it is supposed to be implemented for football as well. It is hoped that with this, a line for new legal requirements to protect women’s salaries can begin to be drawn. One the most recognised cases of women’s sports law happened last year and was about a very well-known club that was involved with several female football players who received the authorisation to finish their contracts with the former club by just cause according to 12bis and 14bis of FIFA’s RSTP (Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players). The situation was that the dispute resolution chamber of the Ecuadorian Football Federation accepted the just cause even when there was no intimation with respect to unpaid salaries and even the former club proved that they had paid all of the supposedly unpaid amounts.

In Ecuador, there is no particular NFT regulation, but they could be handled by the Intellectual Property Regulations. The only sporting body that uses the NFT market is the Ecuadorian Football Federation but it does not have a big impact on Ecuadorian society.

No information has been provided regarding regional issues in the jurisdiction of Ecuador.

In Ecuador, there is no particular AI regulation, but it could possibly be handled by the Intellectual Property Regulations.

There is no particular metaverse regulation in Ecuador, but it could be covered by the Intellectual Property Regulations.