Novig prices
Prediction markets vs sportsbooks for Patriots games: who sets the price
A sportsbook builds its margin into both sides; a prediction market matches traders and charges a fee, or none. What that means for $100 on the Patriots.
Two very different kinds of venue put a price on every Patriots game. A sportsbook decides the price and takes the other side. A prediction market lets traders decide it among themselves. They arrive at a number from opposite directions, and the difference shows up in what a winning position pays. In Massachusetts the comparison is a live one, because the state licenses sportsbooks and is also in court over whether prediction markets can offer sports contracts there at all.
How a sportsbook makes its money
A sportsbook is your counterparty. It sets the line, takes the opposite side of every ticket and protects itself by shading both prices. A game it considers a true coin flip doesn't go up at +100 each way; it goes up at -110 each way. Turn those into probabilities and they add to about 104.8%. The extra is the book's margin, the vig or hold, and it is in the price before kickoff.
You never see it as a charge. It sits inside the odds. DraftKings had Sunday's game at Patriots -170 and Packers +142 as ESPN listed it at about 4:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday. As probabilities those add to 104.29%: a hold of about 4.3% before anyone has taken a side.
How a prediction market makes its money
A prediction market isn't your counterparty. It is a matching engine. A trader who thinks the Patriots win is paired with one who thinks they lose, and the price is wherever their orders meet, quoted in cents as a probability. A Patriots contract at 61 cents pays $1 if New England wins. No house is protecting a position, so nobody has a reason to shade the line, and the two sides of a busy market usually sum to within a cent or two of $1.
Each venue charges in its own way:
- Novig charges nothing on pre-game straight trades on its app or website. Live (in-game) trades that take a resting order pay a taker fee of 0.06 × price × (1 − price) per contract, in the NFL as in every league, and traders whose resting orders are filled pay nothing, per Novig's fee schedule as of November 2026.
- Kalshi charges a taker fee scaled by price, built on a 7% rate. It is largest near 50 cents and shrinks as one side becomes a heavy favorite.
- Polymarket US sets fees by market; check its schedule before trading.
The same game, four returns
Suppose the Patriots trade at 61 cents on an exchange, close to what DraftKings' prices imply once the book's margin is taken out (62.96% divided by 104.29% is about 60.4%).
| Venue | Quote | Profit on a winning $100 |
|---|---|---|
| Prediction market, no fee (Novig pre-game) | 61¢ (about -156) | $63.93 |
| Prediction market, live taker fee (Novig in-game) | 61¢ | $60.19 |
| Prediction market, 7% fee rate (Kalshi) | 61¢ | $59.58 |
| Sportsbook (DraftKings, Friday afternoon) | -170 | $58.82 |
The 61-cent exchange price is an illustration, not a quote. The point is the mechanism: at the same price, the no-fee trade pays the full value of the probability on the screen, every fee takes a slice off the top, and the sportsbook takes its slice by moving the price instead. The board runs this arithmetic on live prices for every Patriots game and sorts each side from best return to worst, and How to read the Patriots board walks through the formula.
Where Massachusetts fits
The DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Fanatics and theScore Bet rows on the board are sportsbooks the Massachusetts Gaming Commission licenses, so a fan in Foxborough can open them at 21 and over. Those books pay the state a 20% tax on their online revenue and follow the Commission's rules on advertising and age checks.
Prediction markets sit outside that system. They answer to the CFTC in Washington, and Massachusetts disputes that federal oversight covers sports. Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell's suit against Kalshi won an injunction in Suffolk Superior Court in January, the Appeals Court paused it in February, and the Supreme Judicial Court heard the appeal in May. As of Friday it had not ruled. Polymarket US went to federal court in February to keep the state from doing the same to it. Novig, a CFTC-regulated exchange, is available in Massachusetts. Massachusetts sports betting in 2026 covers the details, and the Massachusetts page prices this week's Patriots game at the venues a fan in the state can use.
Novig is live in 47 states, all but Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. What new traders get when they sign up is on the Novig offer page.
What "no fee" doesn't promise
No fee doesn't guarantee a better price. On a prediction market the price comes from other traders and moves with them, and a thinly traded market can show a wider gap between the best buy and the best sell than a sportsbook's built-in margin. The board catches that, because the hold column measures every venue's two sides the same way. An NFL game draws more volume than almost anything else in American sports, so the gap is usually narrow, but the board measures it on every refresh rather than assuming it.
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