Alarm at the Ballon d'Or over an alleged leak: suspicious bets worth 200,000 euros are being investigated
The directors of France Football have already put what happened in the hands of the Police
The controversy once again surrounds the Ballon d'Or . If hours before the gala there was a leak with three news items on its official website naming Kane, Mbappé and Lamine as the winners, now France Football has passed on to the French police information about several bets placed before the gala that ended with the English striker as the winner. The reason for the alarm: several accounts correctly predicted not only the winner, but the exact order of the top five.
According to research by Upside , 12 Polymarket accounts moved around $264,000 in bets related to the award. Seven of them had no previous activity in other markets, and six were created just minutes before they began trading.
The predictions ended up matching the official result: Kane came first, followed by Kylian Mbappé, Lamine Yamal, Rodri and Leo Messi. The accuracy of the bets would have allowed their authors to obtain a $200,000 profit, around €180,000.
One of the cases that draws the most attention is that of an account that initially bet on Kane as the winner and, after selling its contracts when their value increased, allocated part of the money to much more specific markets on the candidates' final ranking.
Now, the main unknown is where that information came from. France Football keeps the results under the strictest confidentiality before the ceremony and has placed the matter in the hands of the authorities to determine whether a leak could have occurred.
For the moment, there is no evidence that there was any insider information or that the accounts were directly linked to France Football. The investigation will have to clarify whether it was a leak, a strategy based on information obtained through other means, or an extraordinarily precise coincidence.
