It was one of the greatest nights of Harry Kane’s life: winning the Ballon d’Or.
He may never win the Champions League, the Premier League or the World Cup, but the English striker will forever be remembered as a great of the modern game following a remarkable 2025/26 season.
Kane took the spoils ahead of Kylian Mbappe, with Lamine Yamal third in the voting, Rodri fourth and Lionel Messi fifth.
It’s that exact order that has hit the headlines recently. Some bookmakers offered Ballon d’Or betting markets, but more action was available on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi in North America, who offered their customers a chance to bet on the exact finishing positions of the vote.
And 12 Polymarket accounts, which appear to have some sort of connection with one another, all got that top five exactly right – winning just shy of £150,000.
So was this some kind of ruse? Investigators certainly think so, with French police now called in to take a closer look at the evidence, which reportedly includes a coordinated pattern of suspicious bets placed at very specific times.
Suspicious Bets
Using inside information to profit from betting is a criminal offence. So did somebody in and around the Ballon d’Or know what the top five was going to be before the vote was revealed in public?
That’s the question originally asked by France Football, the media outlet that manages the award and its ceremony. They claim that only a select few people know the voting order in advance, which reduces the risk of any ‘leaks’ making it into the press.
The possibility of foul play was first raised on the investigative journalism site Upside, which claimed that $264,000 (£196,000) was wagered by 12 different Polymarket accounts on the same outcomes.
Those dozen accounts, all created between October 1 and October 20, placed bets of different sizes on the Ballon d’Or exact finishing order market. Six of them put down their wagers within 15 minutes of account creation, while seven of the dozen were yet to subsequently bet on anything else.
Insider Info?
As well as those suspicious bets, some of the line movements on Polymarket were also considered to be bizarre. At times Kane and Yamal were neck-and-neck in the betting, with the duo miles ahead of Mbappe in the market.
But then, in October, the probability chance of Yamal finishing ahead of Mbappe dropped from 80% to 28% in a matter of days, with no obvious reason as to why that would be the case.
What was Kylian Mbappé’s final position in the 2026 Ballon d’Or? 🤔
And why he is football’s most consistent superstar?
Here are the answers ➡️ https://t.co/LJMe77LlAc
#ballondor #mbappé https://t.co/8t5KC3xeF9
— Ballon d’Or (@ballondor) October 29, 2026
The size and timing of the bets has naturally created suspicion; to the point that the matter will now be investigated as a possible criminal offence, with insider trading and ‘cheating at gambling’ just two of the potential charges that can be brought.
If the alleged perpetrators can be located, that is. Polymarket does not have the same stringent verification processes as UK licensed betting sites, with sketchy at best protocol in place.
As such, it’s possible that prosecutors in France will be seeking the proverbial needle in a haystack amongst the prediction market’s estimated 500,000 active monthly users.
Cheating at Gambling
It sounds like a quaint term of which a Victorian gent might be guilty: ‘you, sir, stand accused of cheating at gambling!’
But there are serious ramifications if you are found to have committed this very specific type of crime, with hefty fines and even prison time on the list of possible sanctions.
At the time of writing in England, 15 people have been sentenced – or await sentencing – over an alleged inside information scandal that rocked the 2024 General Election.
The individuals are said to have known the date of the election in advance of it being made known in public. They then placed bets on said date with the Betfair Exchange and other outlets – the sheer definition of ‘insider trading’ and ‘cheating at gambling’.
Craig Williams, a former MP in Wales, bet more than £370 on the election date. He was a former aide to the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. Williams pled guilty to cheating at gambling and will be sentenced next year.
Amy Hind tried to place two bets totalling £1,400 on a July election before the date was known, but they were rejected by her bookmaker – she did, however, place a flurry of smaller bets.
Hind received a suspended prison sentence, as did husband-and-wife duo Anthony and Laura Lee. Anthony Lee was party to inside information as the Conservative Party’s director of campaigning – they together placed £2,000 of bets and stood to win more than £20,000.
The remaining defendants will have their day in court next year.