After going five seasons without an incident, has another online gambling leak revealed the winner of Survivor: Panama -- Pearl Island?
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Bodog.com announced Tuesday that suspicious betting patterns on one of the show's eight remaining contestants has forced it to halt wagering on Survivor: Panama, the twelfth edition of the long-running CBS reality show.
According to the online gambling website, its bookmakers made the decision to close betting on Survivor: Panama after it received a number of $100 maximum bet wagers from the same New York State area on Danielle DiLorenzo, a 24-year-old Lynnfield, MA native who currently lives in Florida. More peculiarly, Bodog says its Customer Service center received a weekend phone call "from a concerned citizen who suggested that a close associate of DiLorenzo has been leaking the information to friends."
"Our entertainment bookmakers were quick to react and investigate this incident, and although we can't at all substantiate the claim of the person who called, the lines have been taken down as a precaution," stated Bodog founder and CEO Calvin Ayre. "Our entertainment bets are designed to enhance the wagering and viewing experience for our customers, and it is our duty to ensure that the integrity of the lines are kept intact at all times."
Although all major network reality-competition shows require contestants and their families to sign non-disclosure agreements (agreements that typically feature multi-million dollar violation penalties) as a condition of the contestants' participation, several reality shows have still been "spoiled" by online betting during the last few years. If Bodog's latest suspicion proves correct, Survivor: Panama's disclosure would mark the seventh time that the identity of a major network reality show winner has been revealed via online gambling -- with CBS's The Amazing Race being the only other reality series to have been leaked more than once.
The first instance involved ABC's The Bachelor 2, when residents of Springfield, Missouri bet on BetWWTS.com that hometown boy Aaron Buerge's final rose would be given to Helene Eksterowicz -- a report strongly (but falsely) denied by the network.
Next came the first two instances involving CBS's Survivor. In Survivor: The Amazon (the sixth edition), Bodog reported that a number of CBS employees had wagered on the final two being Jenna Morasca and Matthew von Ertfelda, as it indeed was. In the very next series, Survivor: Pearl Islands, BetWWTS.com suspended betting in September 2003, before the show even aired, after receiving over 95% of its bets on eventual winner Sandra Diaz-Twine. A week later, Intertops.com also suspended betting after receiving disproportionate action on Sandra and "decoy" Osten Taylor (who actually quit the show halfway through.)
The next year, BetWWTS.com also uncovered the identities of the final two contestants of Fall 2004's The Apprentice 2, announcing shortly after the show had premiered that unusually heavy betting on Jennifer Massey and Kelly Perdew (the show's eventual two finalists) had forced them to stop accepting bets on the series.
Last spring, Sportsbook.com announced that it had suspended wagering on CBS's The Amazing Race 7. Similar to Bodog's present situation, Sportsbook reported that it had suddenly received an unusual amount of geographically-close maximum bets for Uchenna and Joyce Agu, the show's eventual winners.
Like Survivor's 2003 problems, another leak also plagued the next The Amazing Race edition, with the gambling website also later having to suspend betting on last fall's The Amazing Race: Family Edition after a similar pattern of suspicious betting on The Linz family, the show's eventual winners.
