Bodog stops taking bets on Hell’s Kitchen due to suspicious betting patterns
Thursday 7th June 2007
Online sportsbook Bodog has ceased taking bets on Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen 3 television programme after the website’s security department flagged abnormal betting patterns.
Several years ago, Bodog stopped taking bets on who would win the Survivor reality television show after it was reported insiders who worked on the CBS show were using their information to make bets on the winner and spreading that information to others. The website noticed peculiar betting patterns at that time and pulled all of their bets.
Hell's Kitchen is a cooking show where chef Gordon Ramsay plays an authoritative figure and one cook is eliminated every week. Bodog stated that it was again seeing abnormal betting patterns on Rock, a 30-year-old executive chef from Spotsylvania, Virginia. Bodog's odds on his victory went from seven-to-one when betting began to two-to-one by the time of the show’s premiere.
'Upon further investigation of the suspicious betting patterns, Bodog.com's security department established a number of links to employees of the television network responsible for Hell's Kitchen 3,' said a Bodog spokesperson.
Although Bodog's investigations are still on-going and it is not known whether Rock will win the third Hell's Kitchen reality show series, enough peculiar shaped bets were made to make wagers suspicious and Bodog has now pulled bets for this season’s show permanently.
