Who this page is for
A sportsbook operator or platform team choosing a feed, adding a second one, or replacing a supplier. On turnkey the feed contract is in your name and we integrate it, so the questions below are yours to put to the feed provider. On white label the feed is ours, and you choose among the books it supports rather than the feed.
Two readers should stop here. If you want to take bets without building acceptance, risk limits, cash-out and settlement yourself, you need a sports betting API, not a feed. If you need prices for a tipping site, a comparison page or a model, a data API is enough. Searches for "odds API" mostly lead to products of that kind: The Odds API, for example, publishes plans from 500 free credits a month to USD 249 for 15 million. It aggregates bookmakers' prices and sells results as a separate product, so it cannot be used to lay a book.
What a trading feed actually sends you
A price is one message type among several. Sportradar's Unified Odds Feed documents nine, and each one needs a defined response from your platform. The table uses Sportradar's names because they are published; other feeds carry the same events under their own names.
| Message | What it means | What your platform must do | If it is handled badly |
|---|---|---|---|
| odds_change | New prices for some or all markets; can also signal a stop | Update prices and re-check open bet slips | Bets accepted at a price that no longer exists |
| bet_stop | A group of markets is suspended | Stop acceptance on those markets at once | Bets taken after a goal, at pre-goal prices |
| bet_settlement | Results for markets and outcomes | Settle bets and legs, credit the wallet | Wrong selection settled when market mapping is off |
| bet_cancel | A market is voided because of an error | Void affected bets and return stakes | Players paid on a market that never stood |
| rollback_bet_settlement, rollback_bet_cancel | An earlier settlement or cancel was wrong | Reverse it, down to a single outcome, with an audit trail | Winnings paid twice, or a correction that never reaches the balance |
| fixture_change | A new event, a delay or a time change | Update the catalogue and any bets tied to start time | Pre-match markets left open into the live period |
| alive, snapshot_complete | Heartbeat, and the end of a recovery | Detect a dead feed; know when recovery has finished | A silent feed mistaken for a quiet market |
The settlement and rollback rows are what separate a trading feed from a data feed. They are also what the settlement replay on our turnkey launches is designed to exercise.
Push or pull
Live betting runs on push. Sportradar delivers its feed over AMQP; LSports delivers TRADE over RabbitMQ, with delta updates for markets and settlements and full updates for fixtures and livescores. Pull, meaning REST requests on a schedule or on demand, is for the catalogue, for pre-match markets that change slowly, and for recovery.
| Push (message queue) | Pull (REST) | |
|---|---|---|
| Use | Live prices, suspensions, settlements | Catalogue, slow pre-match markets, recovery snapshots |
| Who sets the pace | The feed; your consumer must keep up | You, within the provider's rate limits |
| Main failure | A consumer that falls behind or disconnects, then misses deltas | Polling too slowly for the market, or hitting the rate limit during an incident |
| Published limits | Connection and queue rules per provider | LSports snapshots: unfiltered once every 15 seconds, filtered once a second |
A delta feed is only correct if you never miss a message. LSports says it in its own documentation: the consumer should stay connected at all times and recover deliberately when it cannot.
Recovery: the outage you will have
Every feed drops at some point. What matters is how far back you can recover and what you get when you do. The published windows differ by product.
| Provider and product | How far back you can recover | What recovery returns |
|---|---|---|
| Sportradar, live odds producers | 10 hours | Current odds for active matches, plus settlements, cancels and rollbacks since your timestamp; only the latest update per market |
| Sportradar, most other producers | 72 hours | As above; several settlements for one match may arrive merged |
| LSports snapshot | Fixtures that ended under 24 hours earlier | Current state of a fixture: scores, markets and settlement data |
Two design rules follow. Store the timestamp carried in the last message you processed, not the time your system read it, because that is what Sportradar's recovery call expects. And decide in advance what the book does while recovery runs. Sportradar's guidance for pre-match producers is to stop all markets for that producer's events if you cannot reconnect within about ten minutes. Write that into your trading policy before launch, not during the first outage.
Pre-match and live are different purchases
| Pre-match | Live | |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Pull is often enough | Push only |
| Suspensions | Rare, mostly on team news or a fixture change | Constant, on every dangerous moment of play |
| Latency | Seconds rarely matter | The gap between the event and your bet_stop is your exposure |
| Official data | Seldom mandated | Where mandated, it is usually for live betting |
| Trading cover | Office hours can work | Someone on duty for every match you price live |
Measure latency yourself. Each message carries the provider's timestamp, so the delay between that timestamp and the moment your platform applies the message is your own processing path, and it can be the larger part.
Official data and who must be licensed
In some markets the source of the data is regulated as well as the bet. Illinois and Tennessee require operators to use official league data for live betting (Jones Walker, 29 March 2023). Ontario requires odds makers, like other igaming suppliers, to be registered with the AGCO. On Anjouan every supplier needs its own B2B Recognition Certificate, the feed provider included. Genius Sports holds official data rights for the Premier League and the NFL among others, which matters for a book where those competitions carry the turnover.
Check the feed provider's position in each of your markets before signing. A licence condition on data is your breach, not the provider's.
What drives the cost
Feed providers do not publish operator prices. The quote moves on these lines, roughly in this order:
- Live versus pre-match. Live adds push delivery, constant suspensions and trading cover, so get it quoted separately from pre-match.
- Sports and competitions. Priced by package. Football-led books and long-tail books buy different things.
- Official data. Where it is required or wanted, it is a line of its own. Two Tennessee licensees asked the state's advisory council to relieve them of the mandate because of its cost.
- Minimum term. A fixed fee with a minimum term does not fall in a bad month. The turnkey sportsbook page sets it against tax and platform fees.
- Brands and licences. Whether one contract covers several brands, or several licences, is a clause to negotiate rather than assume.
- Extras. Managed trading, bet builder, streaming and statistics widgets are often priced separately.
We integrate Sportradar, Genius Sports, LSports and OddsMatrix, with no exclusivity. Published coverage for each, and which we recommend for which kind of book, is on the turnkey sportsbook page rather than repeated here.
Questions to put to any feed provider, including us
- How far back can we recover after a disconnect, per product, and what does recovery return?
- How do you signal a suspension, a void and a corrected result, and can a rollback target a single outcome?
- Which of our markets require official data, and do you hold it for the competitions we will trade?
- Are you registered or certified as a supplier where our licence requires it?
- What is the minimum term, and what happens to the contract if we change platform?
- Does one contract cover all our brands and licences?
Frequently asked
Can we run two feeds at once?
Yes, and many books do: a primary for the main sports and a second for the long tail. The work is market mapping. Each feed has its own identifiers for competitions, fixtures, markets and selections, and a mapping error settles a correct result on the wrong selection.
Is the feed or the sportsbook API the cheaper route?
The feed is the cheaper line on the quote and the more expensive project, because acceptance, risk, cash-out, settlement and reporting are left to you. The sports betting API page lists what a data licence leaves out.
What happens to open bets when the feed goes down?
Markets suspend and acceptance stops on the affected fixtures. Open bets stay open, and they settle from the recovery messages once the connection returns, inside the provider's recovery window.
Who should hold the feed contract?
On turnkey, you. It survives a change of platform, which is the point of holding it, and its minimum term is yours, which is the exposure. On white label the feed is part of our service.
Do you support prediction-market contracts on the same feed?
That is a different product under a different licence in most places. See the prediction markets platform.