India’s leading fantasy sports platform Dream11 may land in trouble for its alleged links with a fake T20 league.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India has reportedly asked the Mohali police to probe the connect between Dream11 and the Uva T20 League, which was projected as being played in Sri Lanka but actually held in a village in Punjab. Streaming platform FanCode will also be under the scanner for showing the league.
The league was allegedly organised by alleged match fixer Ravinder Dandiwal, who had been named in a global tennis match-fixing scam by the Australian Police. He was also probed by the ACU of the BCCI earlier this week.
The ACU has also asked the police to investigate advertising banners, which had Sri Lankan companies and stumps with ‘UVA T20’ printed. It also asked the cops to find out why Indian flags were removed from the venue and why white sheets were used to keep outsiders away from the venue. Also, the role of the venue owners, players, umpires and commentators will be further investigated.
The suspicion arose as the players’ kits had Dream11 logos on the back.
“There is also a chance that Dream11 may be linked. We think the kits used might have been from a previous Dream11 tournament. All of the kits had ‘Dream11’ on the back – there is clearly a chance that these could have been forged, but two sides had tape covering up the Dream11 sign. This is strange: if someone was forging it and didn’t want two sides to have it displayed then arguably, they wouldn’t print in the first place,” the BCCI anti-corruption unit, according to The Indian Express, has told to Mohali Police,
“With regard to FanCode, we would also question their involvement as it should not be easy to persuade them to stream a tournament like this,” it further added.
FanCode has assured to cooperate with the investigators. “With the regard to FanCode, we would also question their involvement as it should not be easy to persuade them to stream a tournament like this,” reads a FanCode statement.
“After Day 1 of the tournament, where FanCode streamed two matches, the legal team of SLC reached out to us and informed us that the matches are not approved by them. We immediately stopped streaming these matches on our platform. We are closely working with the Anti-Corruption Unit of SLC and have provided all the documents/ evidence and details available with us, which may be useful for the investigation. We will be more than happy to provide information/ evidence/ documents to any and all investigating agencies working on the matter.”