Real Apodaca

Videos began circulating in February 2025 showing Real Apodaca players negotiating match outcomes with bettors over cryptocurrency, and six of the club's players had been handed suspensions totalling 57 years, one of them banned for 16 years and three others for seven apiece. The club had existed for less than two years at that point, having come into being on 13 June 2023 when Real de Arteaga F.C. left Querétaro City for Apodaca, Nuevo León, under a group of businessmen and former players led by owner Jaime Rodríguez Ruíz.

The team took the nickname "Los Merengues" for a kit that borrows its look from Real Madrid, and it plays in front of no more than 2,000 people at the Unidad Deportiva Centenario del Ejército Mexicano. In the Liga Premier Serie A, Mexican football's third tier, it had already reached a semifinal by the Clausura 2025 and gone all the way to the final of the Torneo Internacional Premier that year, losing there to Vélez Sarsfield.

What the scandal touched most directly was Eduardo Banda, a striker who had come up through Rayados de Monterrey's youth ranks and won the Hugo Sánchez Trophy in January 2025 before a seven-year ban for his part in the match-fixing. Head coach Omar Gómez took charge through the fallout and spoke publicly about the crisis rather than let it pass in silence, and it was under him that Real Apodaca reached its first Liguilla. The club has since found a local needle to thread in the "Clásico Norteño" against Santiago FC.