Bookies spooked as scammers target man-of-the-match voting
Leading bookmakers have stopped taking bets on the winner of the man of the match award at the World Cup amid fears of a fixing scam that could cost them millions.
The award is decided by a public vote on FiFa’s website, so is open to manipulation, and Sportsmail has uncovered evidence of social media tipsters urging their tens of thousands of followers to vote for players they have placed a bet on.
The man of the match market doubled in value last week with FiFa doing nothing to stop such interference.
Some of the tipsters have also been encouraging punters to break FiFa’s rules, which impose a onevote-per-person limit, by producing a video tutorial showing how to register multiple votes. The tipping accounts are largely run by professional gamblers purporting to offer advice to casual gamblers, but also seeking to influence betting markets to make money for themselves. This apparent market manipulation produced a spate of unexpected man of the match winners, such as Wales captain gareth Bale against USa and then Kevin de Bruyne, who said after Belgium’s 1-0 win over Canada: ‘i don’t think i played a great game and don’t know why i got the (award). Maybe it’s because of my name.’ Sportsmail has learned that as a result of these big-name wins the volume of betting on award winners in this country doubled from around £100,000 a game to £200,000 last Thursday, leading bookies to slash their odds and several to close the market.
The bookmakers were particularly spooked after Cristiano Ronaldo won the award in Portugal’s 3-2 win over ghana last Thursday as, due to the amount of accumulator bets, many of them would have been looking at pay-outs of between £1million and £1.5m had neymar been named man of the match in Brazil’s victory over Serbia later in the day.
One tipster bragged about logging 70 votes for neymar in a message seen by Sportsmail, although it failed to pay off as double goalscorer Richarlison won the award after his superstar team-mate limped off injured.
Sky Bet and William Hill were sufficiently concerned by the weekend to withdraw the man of the match market from their websites, and Bet365 have moved to accepting only single bets to remove the risk of being hit by successful accumulators. a Sky Bet spokesperson said: ‘We continually monitor the performance of all of our markets and on this occasion made a trading decision to pull this particular market.’ FiFa are aware of the issue, but have not taken any action. athough the award is officially decided by a fan poll, Sportsmail has learned that the voting dashboard is monitored by FiFa officials throughout matches to ensure the results are in line with what is happening on the field. The world governing body would not say if they had overruled the vote to ensure Richarlison was named man of the match ahead of neymar or if they have influenced any other fan polls at the World Cup. The award itself is a large red vase with Budweiser written across the base. However, FiFa have made sure the trophy does not carry the name of the beer brand when awarded to players from countries where alcohol is prohibited. The branding was missing when iran’s Rouzbeh Cheshmi was named their best player against Wales, and when goalkeeper Mohammed alowais won it after Saudi arabia beat argentina 2-1.