By PredictQ Team // Updated: August 2026
Novig looks like a sportsbook, trades like a stock exchange, and answers to a federal regulator. Since its 2026 relaunch as a CFTC-regulated prediction market, it runs on one currency (dollars), one legal framework (federal), and one product idea: sports fans trading against each other at market prices, with no house in the middle.
The good news for new members is that the platform is simpler than its reputation. Master two concepts, contract pricing and the two order types, and everything else is menu navigation. This guide covers both, plus every trade type on the board, Cash Out, the Novig Points program, and a first trade walked through start to finish.
The Core Concept: Peer-to-Peer Sports Trading
Every market on Novig has two sides. Someone holds Yes (Lakers win), someone holds No (Lakers lose), and Novig matches the pair. The platform never sets the price and never takes the other side of your trade. Other members do.
Compare that to DraftKings or FanDuel, where you bet against the house at a line the house set, with the house’s margin baked in. On Novig you’re trading against another person at a price one of you chose, and the exchange just runs the plumbing.
The catch that comes with the structure: every trade needs a counterparty. If nobody wants the other side at your price, your order sits unfilled. Same as any order book in finance.
Contract Prices Are Probabilities
Forget -110 and +240. Novig prices everything as contracts between 1 cent and $1, and the price reads directly as a probability. A contract at 60 cents is a 60% market. If your side wins, each contract pays $1; if it loses, it pays nothing.
The arithmetic is honest in a way sportsbook lines never are. Buy 100 contracts at 38 cents and you’ve risked $38 to win $100 on an outcome the market prices at 38%. Add up both sides of a Novig market and they sit near 100%. Add up both sides of a sportsbook line and they sum to 104-105%, with the overage going to the house. That missing vig is the entire pricing argument.
Make Orders vs. Take Orders
Two order types cover everything you’ll ever do.
Take: accept an existing offer at the best available price in the book. It matches instantly. See price, tap, filled. This is the market-order equivalent and the right way to place your first trades.
Make: set your own price. Your offer sits in the open order book until another member takes it, or until you cancel. Anyone can make a market on Novig, on any listing.
Take orders are training wheels, and there’s no shame in them. Make orders are where the platform rewards skill. If the best offer on your side is 50 cents and you post at 48, you’re demanding a better price than the market currently gives. Fill, and you bought edge. Sit, and you learned where the market really is. Both outcomes teach you something a sportsbook never would.
The Trade Types
Four categories cover the board:
- Main Markets: moneylines, spreads, and totals, the core gameday trio.
- Player Props: individual player outcomes within a game.
- Parlays: multiple selections combined, all legs must win. Novig’s builder handles both same-game and multi-game parlays, and it’s the most intuitive parlay construction we’ve used on any exchange.
- Futures: season champions, awards, long-horizon outcomes.
Cash Out and Position Management
Novig gives you live control over your positions, which is where exchanges bury sportsbooks.
Cash Out settles a straight trade early for a fixed, guaranteed amount based on current market prices. One important boundary: straights only. Parlays ride until the final leg resolves.
Beyond Cash Out, you can sell positions anytime at market prices or add to them as your read changes. Sell half a futures position after a hot start, hold the rest for the ceiling, buy back in if the price dips. Anyone who has watched a sportsbook offer 60 cents on the dollar for a winning futures slip understands exactly what this flexibility is worth.
Settlement
When an event ends, markets settle automatically. Winning contracts pay $1 each, losing contracts pay zero, and proceeds land in your wallet. Sports markets typically settle quickly after the final whistle, and settled funds are immediately available to trade or withdraw.
Novig Points: The Rewards Layer
Opt in through the app and your normal trading starts earning points, which accrue monthly and reset each cycle:
- Parlay orders: 10 points per dollar traded.
- Make orders: 1 point per dollar traded.
- The Daily Drop: 100 points for completing Daily Challenges.
- Monthly Challenges: up to 175 points each.
Points determine your monthly tier: Starter at 0, Bronze at 300, Silver at 1,800, Gold at 12,000, Obsidian at 60,000. Members at Bronze and above split a monthly cash prize pool, higher tiers taking bigger slices, paid out on the 1st of each month with tier-colored share slips marking your cut. To be precise about the mechanics: points never convert to cash themselves, and there’s no bonus for moving up a level mid-month. Points set the tier, the tier sets your share of the pot. For anyone trading regularly, enrollment is free money for activity you were doing anyway.
Sports Coverage
The board runs wide: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and WNBA; college football plus men’s and women’s college basketball; UFC, ATP and WTA tennis, PGA golf, and esports; and soccer spanning MLS, the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, and the Champions League. Sports only, by design. Novig lists no political, war, or financial markets, and its taglines (“Just Sports,” “Built for Gameday”) tell you the roadmap.
A First Trade, Start to Finish
Here’s the whole loop in one concrete run.
You sign up, verify, deposit $10, and collect $25 in Trade Credits from the welcome offer (terms apply). You find an NBA game where you like the underdog, and the order book shows their moneyline contracts at 40 cents, a 40% market.
You think 40 cents is fair, so instead of taking it you post a Make order at 38 cents for 50 contracts, a $19 position. A minute later another member takes your offer. Matched at 38.
The underdog wins. Each contract pays $1, so $50 lands in your wallet on a $19 position. Had they lost, you’d be out the $19 and nothing more. And if the game had gone sideways at halftime, Cash Out or a straight sale would have let you exit at whatever the live market said your position was worth.
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. The pricing: no vig in any line, the largest structural cost advantage in US sports markets. The counterparty: you trade against people, so winners are welcome and nobody gets limited or banned for being good. Novig claims you’re 10x more likely to win on Novig than at a traditional sportsbook; that’s their number, but the incentive logic behind it is real, because an exchange profits from volume rather than your losses. And the transparency: an open order book showing every price and every layer of depth, against an industry built on hidden lines.
Bottom Line
Novig delivers exchange economics in a package any sports fan can operate: probability-priced contracts, your own quotes if you want to post them, fair-value exits whenever you want out of a straight, and a rewards program that pays the people who show up every month.
Learn the Make order, respect the parlay lockup, and let the pricing edge compound. The platform rewards exactly the habits sportsbooks punish. Sign up HERE 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 August 2026. This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. PredictQ supports responsible trading. Restrictions & requirements apply. Not available in all states. 21+. Event contract trading involves risk & is not appropriate for all. Consider if it’s appropriate for you in light of financial circumstances. See novig.com/terms for information.