Polymarket Sports API (2026): Live Scores, Markets and Streams

What sports endpoints does the Polymarket API have?

All of it is public. The keyset routes page with a next_cursor that you pass back as after_cursor, and events take up to 100 results a page. In our checks, the NFL entry in /sports had the series ID 12185, and /teams?league=nfl returned each team's current record, such as 3-0-0 for the Buffalo Bills.

How do you list a league's upcoming games?

Find the league in /sports, take its series ID, and ask for its open events that start after now. This prints the next NFL games with their moneyline prices, with Node 18 or newer and no key:

const GAMMA = 'https://gamma-api.polymarket.com';
const get = async (path) => (await fetch(GAMMA + path)).json();

const nfl = (await get('/sports')).find((s) => s.sport === 'nfl');
const now = new Date().toISOString();
const { events } = await get(`/events/keyset?series_id=${nfl.series}&closed=false&start_time_min=${now}&limit=20`);

for (const event of events) {
  const ml = event.markets.find((m) => m.sportsMarketType === 'moneyline');
  if (!ml) continue;
  const teams = JSON.parse(ml.outcomes);
  const prices = JSON.parse(ml.outcomePrices);
  console.log(event.startTime, event.gameId, teams.map((t, i) => `${t} ${prices[i]}`).join(' / '));
}

What sports market types does Polymarket offer?

Moneyline, spreads and totals are the core, and Polymarket's docs describe them as which team wins, win by how much, and over or under a combined score. The full list runs far wider, through first-half and quarter lines, team totals, exact margins, both teams to score, and player props such as baseball_player_hits. Pass any of them to /markets/keyset?sports_market_types= to filter.

One NFL game can carry hundreds of markets. In our checks, the Patriots and Bills event for 4 October held 328, including 42 totals, 34 spreads and 32 first-half spreads. A spread market reads like "Spread: Bills (-1.5)" with line set to -1.5, and a total like "O/U 47.5". Soccer works differently: the live Moroccan league game we checked had three separate yes or no markets, for a home win, a draw and an away win.

Some games also split their markets across companion events, with slugs that extend the main slug with suffixes such as -player-props, -halftime-result or -more-markets. Rather than guessing suffixes, read the main event's gameId and list every event with /events/keyset?game_id=. That live soccer game returned six events, from the main match to its exact score and more-markets events.

How do you get live scores from the Polymarket API?

Connect to the Sports WebSocket. It is public, needs no subscription message, and broadcasts every live game update: when a game goes live, when the score or period changes, and when it ends. Each message is the game object itself, with no envelope:

const ws = new WebSocket('wss://sports-api.polymarket.com/ws');

ws.onmessage = ({ data }) => {
  if (data === 'ping') return ws.send('pong');
  const g = JSON.parse(data);
  console.log(g.gameId, g.leagueAbbreviation, `${g.homeTeam} ${g.score} ${g.awayTeam}`, g.period ?? '', g.status);
};

Two details matter in production. Status values vary by sport and are case-sensitive: NFL games use InProgress and Final, tennis uses inprogress and esports use running. And Polymarket's docs describe a text ping every 5 seconds that must get a pong within 10. In our 80-second capture, the pings came as WebSocket protocol frames every 15 seconds, which standard clients answer on their own, so handle both, as the code above does.

If you only need the state now and then, Gamma events carry it too, in live, score, period, elapsed and ended. The official TypeScript client exposes the same updates through client.subscribe([{ topic: "sports" }]). PolyBolt, Polymarket's newer real-time socket, carries crypto, equity and TWAP reference prices rather than game data. Polymarket also warns that sports data "may be delayed, contain errors, or omit recent events", so treat it as a convenience, not a settlement source.

How do sports markets trade differently?

Two rules catch bots out. First, resting limit orders on sports markets are cancelled automatically once the game begins, and Gamma markets carry a clearBookOnStart flag. Start times can shift, so an early kickoff may beat the clearing, and Polymarket advises watching your orders closely around the start. Second, configured sports markets hold a marketable order for a delay window before it can match, set in secondsDelay, and the order sits in delayed status and cannot be cancelled until the window ends. In our checks, every market on the Patriots and Bills event had clearBookOnStart: true and secondsDelay: 1.

Live sports prices move fast, and trading them carries real risk. The full trading setup is covered in the Polymarket API guide.

How do you compare Polymarket sports prices with other venues?

The same game often trades on several venues at different prices. The Predictefy API covers sports and prediction markets across 15+ venues, and its sports screen lines up the same game, bet type, period and exact line from venue to venue, one price per venue, with Polymarket and Kalshi among the venues you can pick. Each price comes as a probability, American odds and decimal odds, next to Predictefy's own best price including known fees, a cross-venue average and a no-vig fair probability. Which venues suit which sports is covered in the best prediction market for sports betting.

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