French police have opened an investigation into suspicious betting on the 2026 Ballon d'Or, after a dozen accounts on the prediction market Polymarket correctly predicted the exact finishing order of the top five players and collected nearly $200,000 in winnings. The organiser of football's biggest individual prize, Groupe Amaury, announced on 31 October that it was filing a complaint with the police over a possible leak of the results and potentially fraudulent bets.

The pattern was uncovered by Upside, a French financial news outlet, which found 12 Polymarket accounts created between 1 and 20 October that together wagered more than $264,000 on the men's Ballon d'Or rankings. Every one of the accounts backed the same top five in the same order: Harry Kane first, Kylian Mbappe second, Lamine Yamal third, Rodri fourth and Lionel Messi fifth. That was precisely the order announced at the ceremony at the London Palladium on 26 October, when Kane was crowned the winner with 1,055 points, just 28 ahead of Mbappe on 1,027, with Yamal third on 881.

What made the betting stand out was how narrowly focused it was. Seven of the 12 accounts placed no bets on any other market, and six of them placed their first wager within 15 minutes of the account being created, according to reporting by The Guardian. Upside raised the alarm in the days before the ceremony and passed its findings to France Football, the magazine owned by Groupe Amaury that organises the award.

Groupe Amaury said in a statement that the integrity of the Ballon d'Or was an absolute priority for France Football and that the winner was chosen through an independent vote. "We take very seriously the allegations of leaks of the results and potentially fraudulent bets," the group said, adding that it was in the process of filing a complaint with the competent police authorities and could share no further details while investigations were ongoing. France Football also contacted the SCCJ, the French police service responsible for gambling-related matters, and an investigation has been opened.

Investigators have at least one thread to follow. According to Upside's blockchain analysis, one of the accounts, trading under the handle kraben006, was linked to a wallet connected to Deblock, a French financial app whose identity-verification records could help identify the person who funded the account. Upside was able to carry out its analysis because Polymarket publishes all user activity openly, and it could not establish that all 12 accounts belonged to a single person.

Nothing has been proven. No leak of the results has been established, no fraud has been proven in court, and no individual responsibility has been publicly identified. Kane remains the 2026 Ballon d'Or winner, the first Englishman to take the award since Michael Owen in 2001, and France Football has stressed that the result was decided by an independent vote of specialist journalists from 100 countries.

The case has put fresh scrutiny on prediction markets, which have grown rapidly and operate with limited regulatory oversight in several countries. Polymarket is banned in France, where the gambling regulator ordered internet providers to block the platform in July 2026, citing bets that appeared rigged and a lack of identity checks. The Ballon d'Or investigation is now the latest test of whether suspicious trading on such platforms can be traced back to the people behind it.