The BBC was dragged into a fresh row over phone-in competitions after a bookmaker stopped taking bets on Match Of The Day's Goal Of The Season competition.
Leading bookmaker Blue Square took more than £10,000 in just four hours on a goal by Arsenal's Emmanuel Adebayor against Tottenham Hotspur - when they would expect to take just £5,000 in a week.
The striker's efforts at White Hart Lane in September had been 9-2 third favourite to top the poll, but even after those odds plummeted to 1-5, bets continued to flood in.
After traders took more than 400 bets and raised fears the result had been leaked, the bookmakers suspended all betting on the contest on Tuesday afternoon.
The competition, which sees 10 of the season's best goals judged by a panel of the show's presenters, had only just been reinstated after the BBC's blanket ban on phone-in competitions last year following a series of scandals.
Viewers are invited to phone or text their selection and can win a prize, usually match tickets, if their choice agrees with that of the experts. Blue Square is the only bookmaker to offer odds on the winning goal.
Alan Alger, spokesman for Blue Square said: "A first there was the usual level of interest. But by Tuesday afternoon we started to take a high number of bets on Adebayor's goal.
"It was relentless, and it far outweighed the usual amount we would take on what is essentially a novelty market. You are talking about over 400 punters, when usually we would expect no more than 50.
"Eventually, we cut the odds to 1-5, but we were still taking bets. People usually only do that when they are sure they are not going to lose. Our traders had the feeling that the result might have been leaked by someone."
He said Cristiano Ronaldo's free-kick against Portsmouth had been the original favourite, followed by his back-heel against Aston Villa.
He added: "We are not for one moment suggesting that the BBC were placing the bets."
A BBC spokeswoman said the winning goal was chosen last Wednesday, but there had been no evidence of a leak.
"We are talking to Blue Square and if there is enough evidence we will investigate," she said.
The BBC suspended all phone-related competitions on television, radio and the internet last July, after it emerged that several high-profile programmes had deceived viewers by using fake winners.
The broadcaster was fined £50,000 by Ofcom after it faked the results of a Blue Peter competition, by allowing a child visiting the studio to pose as a caller, when technical problems stopped real calls getting through to the studio.
Goal of the Month on Match of the Day was one of the first competitions to return, after the BBC introduced its first code of conduct for competitions and voting on every television and radio programme, and online.
The guidelines saw the price of calls to BBC programmes using premium rate lines capped at 15p.
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