What Data You Need to Build an In-Play Sportsbook (2026 Guide)

"What data do I actually need to launch in-play betting?" gets asked at least once a week. Most answers either over-shoot (Sportradar full-fat at $20k/mo) or under-shoot (a free odds-only API that doesn't tell you when a market is suspended). Here's the realistic minimum.

The five feeds that make an in-play book work

The two you can skip on day one

You do not need: prematch statistics, head-to-head history, lineups, or weather. Those are nice-to-haves that move the needle by single-digit percent. Ship without them; add them in v2.

Field-level checklist for live odds

Each odds payload needs at least these fields per outcome:

• event_id — globally unique across your provider
• market_id + market_name — e.g. 1004 / "Correct Score"
• outcome_id + outcome_name — e.g. 2037 / "Over"
• price — decimal odds, integer * 100 (so 2.50 = 250) is a common wire format
• line / special — for handicap, total goals, correct-score (e.g. "+1.5", "2:1")
• state — open / suspended / settled. This is non-optional.
• ts — server-side timestamp of last update

The Euro365 /v1/odds endpoint ships all seven; see the schema.

Suspensions are the part everyone underestimates

When a goal is about to be scored, when there's a contested VAR review, when the feed flickers — the upstream provider suspends the market. Your job is to render it as locked (not bettable) within milliseconds. If you don't:

• Sharp users will spot stale prices and hammer them.
• You'll pay out at frozen odds against post-event reality.
• Your settlement worker will reject those bets, but only after the user already saw "bet placed". That's a support ticket every time.

How Euro365 surfaces it: each market carries a s flag at the spec level (0 = open, 1 = suspended). The internal pattern we use on partner sites is to emit suspended outcomes at price 1.00 — the SPA's existing "price <= 1 means locked" rule handles the rest. Cheap and bulletproof.

Match tracker / LMT widget

This is the live pitch animation users see on every modern in-play page. You can build your own from event streams (player positions, possession, dangerous attacks) but it's a 6–9 month project. The pragmatic path is: iframe-embed a vendor widget. Euro365 ships a free embeddable widget with a single line of HTML — that's how most of our customers get the conversion lift without writing it.

Settlement: where most "cheap" APIs fall apart

"Settlement" means: at full-time, for every outcome you took a bet on, decide win/lose/void/pending. Sounds trivial. It is not.

• FT score alone settles ~60% of markets (1X2, double chance, simple totals).
• HT score is needed for half-time markets (~15% of typical handle).
• Period-by-period data is needed for "anytime goal scorer", "first half BTTS", and ~20 other markets.
• Live event log (cards, corners, penalties, VAR) is needed for the remaining specials.

The Euro365 /v1/settlements endpoint handles V1 (FT-score-settled markets) today, with HT and period data on the roadmap. If you launch with V1 settlement and use a manual review for the long tail, you can ship in weeks instead of months.

Cost frame: what each tier of feed costs (industry ballpark)

If you're shipping your first product, you do not need tier-3. You need tier-1 and the discipline to handle suspensions correctly.