France Football is investigating Polymarket Ballon d'Or wagers after 12 accounts were identified as having correctly predicted the exact top five in the men’s award, a run of betting that has raised questions over whether confidential information may have leaked before the ceremony.
Raphaël Pautard, the co-founder of Upside, said his team identified the accounts and passed the findings to France Football. According to Pautard, the accounts were created between 1 October and 20 October and concentrated their money on one exact finishing order rather than spreading it across different outcomes.
How the bets stood out
The scale of the betting is what makes the case stand out. More than $264,000 was wagered before Monday’s ceremony at the London Palladium, and the bets reportedly generated almost $200,000 in winnings. In one market, the odds moved from 37 cents to 67 cents in just 15 minutes, underlining how quickly the activity shifted around the same outcome.
France Football has organised the Ballon d’Or awards since 1956, and any suggestion that the result or the final order may have been compromised is a serious matter for the organisers. The suspicious pattern around Polymarket has now become the focus, rather than the award itself.
Who is investigating?
Friday afternoon brought further confirmation that France Football had received word that an investigation had been opened. Upside’s role was to flag the pattern, while the award organiser now has to work through how 12 separate accounts were able to converge on the exact same top-five order.
The key question is straightforward: was this simply a remarkable piece of forecasting, or did the bets reflect information that should not have been available before Monday’s ceremony? Until that is answered, the Polymarket Ballon d'Or wagers will remain the most talked-about part of the night.
