Tonight marks the grand final of the Great British Bake Off and viewers will watch as Ian Cumming, Nadiya Hussain and Tamal Ray battle it out for the Bake Off crown.
But some believe they already know the winner - and stand to make large sums of money.
Betting on the resuolt was temporarily suspended at the start of the series following a flurry of large wagers made in the Ipswich area.And this week Ladbrokes has said it will consider whether to allow betting on future series of the Great British Bake Off after claims that workers linked to the show were placing bets on this year’s winner.
The bookmaker is currently investigating bets from 42 gambling accounts with alleged links to BBC staff and Love Productions, the company behind the hit series, according to The Sun.
A total of 529 bets – potentially worth about £10,000 – were placed through the accounts that were created ahead of the pre-recorded final, which airs on BBC One tonight, the newspaper reported.
A Ladbrokes spokesman said: “We flagged at the start of the series that we thought something smelled a bit strange. We are looking into it further.
“If we feel we’ve had the equivalent of a custard pie thrown in our faces we will think twice about whether we should bet on markets like this again in the future.”
A BBC spokesman said: “We have no knowledge of these claims and have asked The Sun to provide us with details to be able to look into it. We are still waiting.”
Bets placed on the outcome of television events such as the Great British Bake Off are often restricted to £20 at any one time, but punters are able to bet more than once over a period of days.
Ladbrokes announced it had stopped taking wagers after it noticed suspicious play on one contestant, whose odds started at 12/1 and were reduced to 6/1, 3/1 and then evens.
Many of the bets were placed in shops around Ipswich and by phone calls coming from the town’s postcode, and came to a total of “a few grand”. Several of the wagers were the maximum the bookies would take for the show, and 90% were placed on one contestant.
A spokeswoman for Love Productions said: “Everyone who works on the production of the Bake Off series is bound by confidentiality. We take any allegation of breach extremely seriously, although we have not been presented with any evidence to support such a claim.
“We are surprised that Ladbrokes chose to take bets on a series which they know to have been pre-recorded.”
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