Fifa’s Code of Ethics prohibits active participants in football from taking money from gambling-related activities, but that rule doesn’t seem to apply to new Real Madrid manager José Mourinho, the current “brand ambassador” of two major sports betting companies.
By Philippe Auclair
And so it’s happened: José Mourinho has signed with “the champion club”.
However, the “champion club”, here, is not Real Madrid, to whom the Portuguese coach has returned after a thirteen year absence. It is iGaming company GR8 Tech, a “re-brand” of Parimatch Tech, itself a division of Ukrainian/Cypriot sports betting operator Parimatch, a major actor in football sponsorship in their own right (*). GR8 Tech sells gaming software and “plug-and-play” sportsbooks to operators such as Mojabet and BongoBongo, which both target the African market (*).
GR8 Tech’s CEO Oleksandr Feshchenko was rather pleased about this addition to his firm’s stable of ambassadors, the other headliner being heavyweight world champion boxer Oleksandr Usyk. “Mourinho brings a different dimension of that same philosophy”, Feshchenko said when the partnership was announced at the end of March of this year, when Mourinho was still managing Benfica. “His career in football proves that sustained winning is never accidental, lucky or coincidental. It takes system-building, tactical intelligence and relentless standards. That message of “it is no luck” is something both of our ambassadors share, and it is central to how GR8 Tech works and to what we offer our partners”.
One-two
José Mourinho’s current links to the betting industry are not limited to his championing of GR8 Tech’s products. He is also, since July 2025, the official brand ambassador of Sportybet in Brazil and Mexico, where he encourages bettors to “invite a friend” to open an account on the platform, for which they will receive a credit of 150 pesos (7.5 euro) for each successful referral. The “José Mourinho-approved” Sportybet, which claims to be “the most visited betting website in the world” on its Brazilian website, is also an official partner of La Liga (*).
Don’t explain, don’t complain
However, as Josimar recently pointed out in its article about the relationship between the Scandinavian gaming group Soft2bet and Atlético de Madrid’s manager Diego Simeone, it should be impossible for an active manager to enter into any kind of partnership with a sports betting company. Article 27 of Fifa’s Code of Ethics – by which football coaches are bound, as several sports lawyers consulted by Josimar have confirmed – is clear as to what the consequences of such dalliances could and should be: a substantial fine and a lengthy ban.
Yet there is no sign of José Mourinho being investigated, let alone being punished by Fifa for this breach of their Code of Ethics, just like Diego Simeone has been allowed to carry on taking Soft2bet’s money. In the very rare cases where “active participants” have been investigated for profiting from their association with gambling, Fifa chose not to intervene or left national associations to deal with the offenders, even when Chilean hardman Arturo Vidal, playing for Colo-Colo at the time, took part in the launch of “Juego con el King” (Play with the King, Vidal being the “King” in question) in 2025, a gambling platform which was presented as his own venture. The platform took all references to and photographs of the player off its website after the scandal broke out in South American media, and the former Barcelona and Bayern midfielder was neither fined nor banned (*). Vidal, now 39, is still playing for Colo-Colo, the current leaders of Chile’s Liga de Primera.
Josimar contacted Fifa and the Investigative Chamber of its Ethics Committee on three separate occasions to clarify the scope and application of Article 27 of Fifa’s Code of Ethics, but has yet to receive a reply.
Serial offender
It is true that Mourinho had already tested Fifa’s resolve – or lack of – in the past. No other manager has embraced commercial endorsements with the same enthusiasm as José Mourinho has done since signing his first major deal with Adidas, weeks after he won his first Premier League title with Chelsea in 2005.
His partners over the past two decades have included Yahoo, Heineken, Polish brokerage firm XTB, Snickers (a collaboration with Meta, which featured an interactive AI avatar of the manager), Uber Eats Portugal, Banco Português de Investimento (BPI), Samsung Mobile (Portugal only) Hublot, Audi, Braun, football collectibles company Topps, Portuguese bank Millennium bcp, Italian luxury menswear brand Zegna, Jaguar, BT Sport, TopEleven, American Express, Lipton Ice Tea, Turkish Airlines, Italian insurance company Prima Assicurazioni and of course Adidas, with whom he has been associated for over twenty years now.
Four sports betting companies should be added to these twenty-two partners, bringing Mourinho’s total of endorsements (known to Josimar) to twenty-six. He first appeared as a parody of himself in the widely-shared Paddy Power 2019 “Special” campaign but was in between jobs at the time (having been sacked by Manchester United but yet to join Tottenham Hotspur), and therefore entitled to work with whomever he wished. This was not the case when he was announced as the “global brand ambassador” of sports betting platform football.com in October 2023, shortly before he parted ways with AS Roma. Then as now, nobody batted an eyelid.
Every time a winner
Mourinho may be an easy catch for advertisers, but this doesn’t mean he comes cheap. Each of the endorsements listed above would have been worth in the region of 1 to 2 million euro to him per year or per campaign, certainly much more in the case of global ambassadorships as, according to Correio de Manha, his Portugal-only campaign for Millennium bcp saw him pocket 1 million euro. It is impossible to say how much money exactly he has received from the betting industry to this day; but it is certain that it was a lot, even if, by the letter of football’s laws, he was entitled to none.
José Mourinho’s representatives at the Gestifute agency failed to respond to Josimar’s repeated requests for comment and clarification.
(*) Mojabet is active in DR Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia, whereas BongoBongo operates in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.
(*) Parimatch has been a regional or global partner of the following football clubs since 2016: APOEL FC, Leicester City, Juventus, Chelsea, Everton, Newcastle, Botafogo, Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Manchester United and Tajikistan’s Higher League club CSKA Pamir Dushanbe.
(*) Gambling advertising is prohibited in Spain, but football clubs and entities are still allowed to enter into partnerships with sports betting operators, legal and illegal, provided that those operators are geo-blocked, do not accept Spanish customers, and that their advertisements are not visible in Spain.
(*) This lack of action is all the more surprising that the scandal erupted when journalists found out that Juego con el King had been offering odds on Vidal being sent off in a Copa Libertadores game against Racing – a game in which the player proceeded to collect two yellow cards.
