By PredictQ Team // Updated: July 2026
Novig looks like a sportsbook, trades like an exchange, and currently operates under a legal structure different from both. That last part is changing: the CFTC approved Novig’s Designated Contract Market application on June 16, 2026, and a regulated 50-state exchange launches in Q3. But the product you can open today is the sweepstakes-era app, so this guide explains both how it works now and what’s about to change.
The good news for new users: once the mechanics click, the platform is simpler than it looks. Nearly all the complexity lives in the dual-currency layer, and we’ll take that apart piece by piece.
The Core Concept: Peer-to-Peer Sports Trading
Novig is a peer-to-peer sports exchange. Every position has two sides. Someone takes the Yes (Lakers win), someone takes the No (Lakers lose), and Novig matches the pair. The platform never sets the price and never takes the other side of your trade. Other users do.
Compare that to DraftKings or FanDuel, where you bet against the house at a price the house set, with the house’s margin baked in. On Novig you’re betting against another person at a price one of you chose.
The catch that comes with the structure: every trade needs a counterparty. If nobody wants the other side at your price, your position doesn’t fill. Same as any order book in finance.
The Dual-Currency Model
Here’s the layer that confuses people, color-coded in the app to help:
Novig Coins (yellow): free-to-play currency for practice and entertainment. No cash value, ever. You get Coins from registration, daily logins, challenges, referrals, and purchases.
Novig Cash (blue): the redeemable currency. Convertible to real cash prizes after a 1x playthrough. It arrives through registration bonuses, promotions, referrals, and as smaller bonus amounts bundled with Coin purchases.
When you buy a Coin package, you get Coins plus a slice of Cash. Coin purchases are the revenue model, which is what funds the no-vig trading structure.
Why does any of this exist? Because the current app operates under sweepstakes law rather than state sportsbook licenses, and the free-to-play path through Coins is what qualifies it. That’s also why availability sits at 40+ states today. When the regulated exchange launches at the end of summer, the sweepstakes structure retires and trading moves to real dollars under federal oversight, nationwide.
Make Orders vs. Take Orders
Two order types cover everything:
Take: accept an existing price from the book. Equivalent to a market order at a brokerage. See price, tap, filled.
Make: post your own price as a limit order and wait. It sits in the book until another user accepts it or you cancel.
Take orders are training wheels, and there’s no shame in them. Make orders are where the platform rewards skill: post prices you believe reflect true probability and you’re setting your own line instead of paying someone else’s. If your price is fair, it fills. If it’s greedy, it sits, and that’s information too.
The Pricing Advantage
A traditional sportsbook builds roughly 4-5% of margin into its lines, which is why a standard spread costs -110 on both sides and your break-even sits at 52.4%. On Novig, that same spread typically trades near even money. Risk $100 to win $100, break-even at 50%.
Your actual pricing depends on what other users will accept. Liquid markets (playoff games, primetime NFL, big UFC cards) have tight, deep books. Thin markets (obscure props, minor events) price worse because fewer people are quoting. The vig you save is real either way; the depth determines how much size it can absorb.
Markets and Bet Types
Coverage spans the US majors and the big international product: NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, WNBA, NCAAF, NCAAB, UFC and combat sports, soccer from the EPL and Champions League through MLS, plus tennis and golf.
Bet types run the full sportsbook menu:
Moneylines: pick the winner.
Point spreads: cover the margin or don’t.
Totals: over/under on combined score.
Props: player and team outcomes within a game.
Parlays and same-game parlays: stacked selections for bigger payouts.
Futures: championships, awards, season-long outcomes.
Novig Odds: custom-priced predictions you create and submit to the book yourself.
Settlement
When an event ends, Novig settles automatically. Winners get paid at the agreed price in Novig Cash, losers forfeit their stake, and settled funds appear in your wallet. Sports markets typically settle within minutes to hours of the final whistle.
Positions Lock at the Match
This is the biggest structural difference from Kalshi and Polymarket, and it deserves its own section. Once your trade matches, it’s held in escrow until resolution. There is no selling out early. Before the match, you have full control: cancel a Make order, reprice it, resize it. After the match, you’re committed.
Functionally that’s closer to a sportsbook bet than an exchange position. The upside is simplicity: your risk is fixed the moment you match, and you never manage live price swings. The downside is you surrender the exit-anytime flexibility that traders on other platforms lean on. Size your positions knowing they’ll ride to the end.
Trading Hours
Around the clock. Markets are open whenever events are scheduled, with no regular maintenance windows.
A First Trade, Start to Finish
Here’s the whole loop in one concrete run:
You sign up, pass KYC, and claim the welcome package: 1,000 Novig Coins, 5 Novig Cash, and $50 in Coins after a $5 purchase.
You find an NBA playoff game where you like the underdog at +7.5. The best Take price is +100, true even money.
Instead of taking it, you post a Make order at +105 with a $20 Novig Cash stake, asking for slightly better than the market.
Thirty seconds later another user accepts. Matched at +105. Your $20 moves to escrow.
The underdog covers. The market resolves, and your $20 stake plus $21 in winnings lands in your Novig Cash balance: $41 total.
Having cleared playthrough on the staked amount, those winnings are redeemable whenever you want them.
That’s the entire product: find a price you disagree with, quote your own, get matched, get paid.
What Makes Novig Different
Three things, in order of importance. The pricing: no vig on any line, the most meaningful cost advantage in US sports trading. The counterparty: you trade against people, so nobody limits you for winning or shades lines to manage house exposure. The trajectory: a CFTC DCM designation in hand and a regulated nationwide exchange launching within months, which almost no competitor in the sweepstakes era can claim.
Bottom Line
Novig delivers exchange economics in a sportsbook wrapper: no vig, your own prices if you want to quote them, and settlement mechanics anyone who has placed a bet already understands. The dual-currency system is the price of admission today, and it’s a temporary one, with the federal transition arriving by end of summer.
Learn the Make order, respect the position lock, and let the pricing edge do its compounding. The platform rewards exactly the habits sportsbooks punish. Sign up and you’ll be trading in minutes.
Disclosures: PredictQ may receive compensation when readers sign up for platforms through links on this page. Information accurate as of July 2026. Novig currently operates a sweepstakes-style model that varies by state while transitioning to a CFTC-regulated exchange. Sports trading involves substantial risk and is not appropriate for all participants. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Must be 21 or older. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.