Ballon d’Or Behind the Scenes: Voting Error – The Details

Ballon d’Or Voting: Two Journalists Made Mistakes in Their Votes, Altering the Final Results

During the 68th Ballon d’Or ceremony, held on October 28, 2024, at Le Théâtre du Châtelet and presented by France Football, contrary to popular belief, this year’s award was given to Spanish national team midfielder Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, known as Rodri, currently a key player for Manchester City.

The results revealed a 41-point difference between him and the other contender for the Ballon d’Or, Vinícius Jr., with Rodri receiving a total of 1170 votes compared to the 1129 earned by the Brazilian forward from Real Madrid.

The jury, composed of 99 journalists, voted by selecting ten players, rather than five as in previous editions, ranking them in descending order of merit and assigning them 15, 12, 10, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 point respectively.

Among the top 30 ranked players, the top five were Rodri, Vinícius, Bellingham, Carvajal, and Haaland.

Here’s What Happened:

These results sparked a series of controversies among professionals in the field and prompted various checks, eventually leading to the confession of two journalists who admitted they had mistakenly voted for Rodri instead of Vinícius due to technical errors.

The first of them, Campo Elias Estrada, stated that he had intended to award the victory to the Brazilian and place Rodri fifth, but during the update process, the results were altered—something he only realized several days later.

Also unintentionally making the same mistake was Finnish journalist Juha Kanerva, who, following this incident, announced his intention to resign from the Ballon d’Or jury.