Get Sports Odds and Data with an Odds API

You’re watching an NFL game, right? You pull out your phone and boom, the betting odds have already changed. How in the world does that happen so fast? Well, it’s all powered by this massive, real-time universe of data. In this explainer odds API guide, we’ll show you exactly how that data gets from the odds source straight to your screen. So let’s get right to it on how to get sports odds data.

How to get sports odds to your app or platform?

How does an app on your phone pluck one single tiny piece of information, like say a prop bet for one player’s rushing yards, out of a literal ocean of data and do it almost instantly? Well, the answer lies in this incredibly powerful tool, something called an API. It stands for Application Programming Interface.

I know, it sounds super technical, but the idea is actually really, really simple. Just think of it like this. The big database is a restaurant kitchen with every ingredient you could ever imagine. Now your app doesn’t just barge into the kitchen and start grabbing stuff, right? No, it talks to a waiter, and that waiter is the API. You give that waiter a very specific order, and they go to the kitchen and bring back exactly what you asked for. Nothing more, nothing less.

Okay, so let’s try it out. Let’s be the customer at this data restaurant. Our goal is to find some betting odds for the NFL. And to start, we’re not going to be picky at all. We’re just going to cast a really wide net and make a broad request just to see what’s even out there.

NFL Odds API Query

So our very first order for our waiter has just three simple parts: 1. First, we tell it the league, NFL. Easy. 2. Second, we say odds available equals true. All that does is tell the system, hey, only show me games I can actually bet on right now. 3. And third, we set a limit of 10. That’s just to make sure we don’t get this huge, messy data dump. We just want the first 10 things it finds.

Endpoint request: /events?apiKey=API_KEY_HERE&leagueID=NFL&oddsAvailable=true&limit=10

And here we go. This is what the waiter brings back to our table, a nice, clean, organized list. You can see the teams playing, the types of bets available, like money line or point spread. See, we’ve successfully pulled data. But it’s still pretty broad, you know? The real power is in getting the details.

Okay, now this is where it gets really fun. We don’t want every possible bet for every game. Well maybe you do, but its a lot of data. What if we only care about how individual players are going to perform and their odds? Well, to do that, we need to get a little more specific with our order/endpoint query. And the key is this little magic keyword, player underscore ID(Player_ID). So what is that? Well, every single player in the league has their own unique ID, kind of like a digital jersey number that the computers understand. By adding just this one little parameter to our request, plus the oddID pattern we’re telling that waiter, hey, forget about the game winner. I only want to see a specific market that has to do with individual players.

For example, this query:

events?apiKey=API_KEY_HERE&oddsAvailable=true&leagueID=NFL&oddIDs=rushing_yards-PLAYER_ID-game-ou-over,rushing_yards-PLAYER_ID-game-ou-under

Will give you the over-unders on NFL rushing yards for all players. Note that the “PLAYER_ID” value is a special value which means “any playerID”

NFL Specific Player Prop Odds API Query

So we’ve already gone from the entire league down to just player-focused prop odds. But we can actually go one step further. We can get surgical here and target one single athlete out of the thousands in the league. This is where it gets seriously powerful. So how do we do it? You’re going to love this. It’s incredibly simple. The trick is to just take that generic player ID keyword and replace it with the actual unique ID for the one player we care about. It’s like the difference between asking the waiter for a soda versus asking for a Diet Coke. So for example, if we swap in the specific ID for, say, Buffalo Bills running back James Cook, the API instantly knows what to do.

events?apiKey=API_KEY_HERE&oddsAvailable=true&leagueID=NFL&oddIDs=rushing_yards-JAMES_COOK_1_NFL-game-ou-over,rushing_yards-JAMES_COOK_1_NFL-game-ou-under

It filters out every other player in the entire league and brings us back only the over-under odds for his rushing yards. That right there, that’s how your fantasy app can send you a custom alert the second his yardage prop odds change. That’s the power of a really precise request.

Pro Tips: Smarter, Faster Sports Odds API Queries

Okay, so now we know how to find basically any piece of data we want. But in the world of live sports, speed is everything. You’ve got millions of people checking an app at the same time. So now let’s look at a couple of pro tips to make our data requests smarter, lighter, and a whole lot faster when you get sports odds data.

Here are two fantastic ways to optimize: 1. First, if you only care about odds from a specific sportsbook, you can filter by bookmakerID. This stops the API from sending you this mountain of data you don’t even need.

bookmakerID=fanduel,draftkings,hardrockbet,betmgm,circa

2. Second, and this one’s really clever, you can set opposing odds to true. This means if you ask for the over on a bet, the API automatically includes the under in the same exact response. You get both sides of the coin with just one request. It’s literally twice the info for half the work.

includeOpposingOdds=true

So let’s zoom out for a second on how to get sports odds. We’ve gone from this huge, vague ocean of data all the way down to the specific odds for one player from one sportsbook. Learning this language, how to ask the right questions, is the fundamental building block for any tool that tracks, analyzes, or visualizes.

So now that you understand the recipe for finding almost any piece of sports odds data imaginable, what questions would you ask? What kind of cool thing would you build?

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