What in play betting means
Pre-match markets close at kick-off. In play markets open at kick-off and keep trading until the final whistle. The price of every selection reflects the state of the match right now: the score, the clock, who has the ball, who serves, how many outs are left.
That changes the job of the price. A pre-match price is set once and drifts slowly as news comes in. An in play price is a live estimate that has to react to a goal, a break of serve or a turnover within moments, or it is simply wrong.
There are three layers to every in play market: a price that moves, a status that can switch between open and suspended, and a result that arrives from the incident feed. Fans mostly see the first layer. Operators spend most of their effort on the second and third, because a market that stays open for a few seconds too long after a goal is a market that pays the wrong people.
Main types of in play markets
Live markets fall into a few families. Each one reacts to the match in a different way.
- Match result markets. Who wins from here. These move slowly between incidents and jump on a score.
- Short window over/under lines. Many sportsbooks also run totals and handicaps for the whole match; our engine does not. Its lines cover short windows, such as points in the next 2 minutes in basketball, where time decay pulls the price every second.
- Next event markets. Next goal, next point in tennis, next round in CS2. They reset after each event.
- Micro-markets. Very short windows: goal in the next 5 minutes, result of the next point, outcome of the current drive.
Micro-markets are the fastest growing part of live trading, and also the hardest to run by hand, because one match opens a new window every few minutes, in several market types at once. Our micro betting markets page shows how a generator opens, prices and closes those windows automatically.
Why markets suspend
A suspension is a short pause in which no new selection can be taken. It protects the price from information that has not reached it yet.
Suspensions happen around dangerous incidents: a goal, a penalty award, a red card, a score in basketball or a break point in tennis. The feed reports the incident, the market status flips to suspended, the model reprices with the new state, and the market reopens a few seconds later at the new price.
In our engine micro-markets are suspended for a few seconds after every dangerous incident, then reopened at a recomputed price. Prices themselves are recomputed every second for each live event, so a reopened market never shows a price from before the incident.
For a fan the visible effect is a tile that greys out and comes back with a different multiplier. For an operator it is the most important control in the stack, which is why it sits inside the risk tools and not in the user interface.
| Layer | What changes it | Who cares most |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Score, clock, possession, serve, time decay | Fans and traders |
| Status (open or suspended) | Dangerous incidents such as goals, cards, scores, breaks of serve | Risk and trading teams |
| Result (settlement) | Confirmed incidents and the final whistle in the feed | Fans, finance and payout systems |
How in play markets settle
Settlement is the moment a market gets its result. Live markets settle from the incident feed, the same stream that moves the price.
When the feed confirms that the window for "goal in the next 5 minutes" closed with no goal, that market settles as "No" and every open call on it is resulted. When a goal arrives inside the window, the market settles as "Yes" and the next window opens. Longer markets, such as the match result, settle when the feed reports the final whistle.
Fast settlement matters for two reasons. Fans want to see the outcome of a call while the moment is still on screen. Operators want to release the liability and offer the next market straight away. In our engine a market settles when its market resolves, from the incidents and the clock of the match.
On the Platform, every bet the operator records through the API is settled the same way, and its result arrives as a signed bet.settled webhook (HMAC SHA-256), so the sportsbook can pay out without polling.
Play in play markets for points with no money
RealTimeBets Play turns these live markets into a game. You make a call on a live market, for example the next point or a goal in the next 5 minutes, and back it with points. If the call lands, you win points at the multiplier shown at the moment you called.
It is a game. No money is wagered, points have no cash value, and they cannot be bought, transferred or exchanged. There are no prizes. You need to be 18 or older to play.
The sports prediction game runs on the same engine described on this page, so you see real suspensions and real settlement as they happen. Matches in the engine today are replays of fictional teams marked "Replay"; real matches from the licensed data feed appear with a "Live" label.
You can make 3 calls without an account, and 10 demo calls in total once your email is confirmed. Premium is $49 per month, or $24 per month billed yearly.
In play markets for licensed operators
If you run a licensed sportsbook, the same engine is available as a product. The live odds API for in-play markets delivers prices over REST and streaming push, with the market status in every payload and settlement of recorded bets by signed webhook.
Operators use it in different ways. A media site embeds live widgets. A sportsbook takes the full price feed and runs its own risk rules on top. A new operator adds micro-markets by taking the engine events that already carry them.
Prices come from our own statistical models: Poisson goal models for soccer and ice hockey, a serve-hold Markov model for tennis and possession models for basketball and American football. Every price carries a margin of about 6 percent over the fair probability, and micro-markets come with the Growth plan.
Production keys require a stored licence record (licence number, regulator, country) and a paid plan. A sandbox key arrives right after signup: delayed 60 seconds, one sport, 1,000 requests, seven days. The sportsbook platform overview lists every module and plan.