Melbourne: Cricket Australia is on high alert after more than 600 million dollar bet have been placed on Big Bash League games this summer, putting anti-corruption police on their toes.
A CA spokesman said anti-corruption measures had been centralised and there were the same strict security measures in place for Big Bash matches as there were for international games.
Punters on global betting giant Betfair had 573 million dollar in bets on 22 Big Bash games before Tuesday night’s match.
The Courier-Mail reports that a range of other corporate and online bookmakers in Australia and around the globe have taken more than another 30 million dollar in bets on Australia’s domestic T20 competition.
But it is the volume of bets on Betfair, where punters can back teams to win or lose and bet live ‘in-play’ at any stage during matches that is most staggering.
The Big Bash has become such big betting business that Betfair punters are going to games and betting in live markets from the grandstands so they can try to get an edge over a several-second television delay, the paper reports.
CA has engaged an external bet monitoring company, Sportradar, to identify suspicious betting trends.
