What a Probability on a New York Contract Actually Says

A probability in one paragraph

A prediction market contract pays a fixed amount if a stated thing happens and nothing if it does not, so the percentage beside it is the market's own statement of how likely the outcome in its rules is. Because the payout is fixed, the price does all the work: the likelier traders think the thing is, the more they will pay to hold the claim, and the price climbs toward the full payout. Say a contract trades at 60%. That is the market reporting that the last people to transact were willing to pay 60% of the payout for the claim, which is the same as saying they put a 60% chance on it. It is not a forecast this site makes, and it is not a statement that the thing will happen. Across many contracts priced near 60%, it is the claim that roughly six in ten of them resolve Yes.

How it works step by step

1. Read what the contract settles on before you read the number. A percentage attaches to a specific sentence of rules, not to the subject in general. The contract on the Mets reaching the 2026 playoffs resolves Yes when the club clinches a place under Major League Baseball's rules and No the moment advancing becomes impossible, and its rules then go further: a tiebreaker game does not count as part of the playoffs, and a cancelled or badly delayed postseason resolves the contract No rather than voiding it. Every one of those clauses is inside the number. A reader who takes the percentage as a general statement about how good the Mets are has read a different question from the one the market is answering.

2. Convert the quote into a percentage. An exchange usually quotes a contract as a share of its full payout rather than as a percentage, because the share is the price a trader actually pays. Suppose the full payout is one dollar and the last trade went through at 0.40 of it: that quote and a probability of 40% are the same statement written two ways. This site converts every quote it displays and states probabilities as percentages, so a percentage is what you will see on these pages.

3. Notice that a contract has three numbers, not one. There is the highest price anyone is offering to pay, the lowest price anyone is asking to be paid, and the price at which the last trade actually happened. On a busy contract those three sit within a point or two of each other and the distinction hardly matters. On a quiet one they can sit far apart, and the last trade can be hours or days older than either of the live offers around it. A single displayed percentage is a summary of that little cluster, and the cluster is the more honest object.

4. Count the venues. One exchange pricing a contract is one book's opinion rather than a consensus, and two exchanges can price the same outcome differently because they settle against different wording. The Mets playoff contract is quoted by two exchanges; the equivalent contract on the Knicks reaching the 2026-27 postseason is quoted by one, and that one adds a clause the reader has to carry, namely that reaching the play-in tournament does not count as qualifying. Two numbers can be compared. One number is a book agreeing with itself, and it should be read as such.

5. Take the date with the number. A probability is a fact about the moment it was quoted and about nothing later. A reading on a live board carries the time it was taken; a percentage repeated anywhere without one is a figure of unknown age. This matters most where a market is thin, because a price that nobody has traded against in a week is not a fresh opinion that nothing has changed. It is an old opinion nobody has bothered to argue with.

6. Ask what has traded behind it. Volume is the weight under a price. A contract that has turned over a large amount has been argued about by many people with money at stake, and its percentage carries their disagreement in it. A contract with almost no volume can print a number as confidently as a busy one and mean far less by it, and the far end of a long field is where thin prices congregate.

7. Look at the other side. Where an exchange lists opposite outcomes on the same question, they are two ends of one claim, and reading only the leading side hides half of what the market is saying. The No price on a contract is not decoration: on most questions it is where the majority of the conviction sits, and a reader who only ever reads the Yes row is reading the minority view by habit.

Where New York readers stand

Whether any particular exchange is open to a person in New York is a question of record rather than of arithmetic, and it moves when a filing or an order moves it. This guide does not answer it and draws no conclusion about it. What New York's own documents say, and the dates on which they say it, is set out on the legal status page, which is the page to read alongside any number here. This guide is not legal advice and not financial advice.

Common misreadings

A high percentage means the question is closed. It does not. Say a contract trades at 90%: it is still putting one chance in ten on the other side, and one chance in ten arrives often enough to matter. A price near the top of the range is a strong claim about likelihood and never a statement that the question has been decided.

The number is this site's forecast. It is not. Every probability shown on these pages comes from an exchange's order book and is displayed with the venue that produced it and the time it was read. The site reports prices and does not set them, and it takes no position on any outcome it lists.

One venue means the market agrees. It means one book agrees with itself. Two exchanges can price the same New York question under different settlement wording and differ honestly, and where that happens the board shows both rather than averaging them into one.

A price that has not moved is a price everyone accepts. Sometimes it is, and sometimes nobody has traded it. A flat line on a busy contract is a real consensus; a flat line on a contract with a handful of trades behind it is a record of absence. Volume and the age of the last trade are what tell the two apart, and the difference between them is not visible in the percentage itself.

The percentage is about the subject. It is about the sentence. A club, an office or a city is not what settles; a specific written test is, and the same subject can carry several contracts that disagree with each other because each is testing something slightly different.

Related guides and markets

The contracts used above are on the Mets playoff market page and the Knicks playoff market page, and the full catalogue is at the markets catalogue. The particular shapes a New York reader meets have guides of their own: a row of thresholds on one club in how win total ladders settle, a whole league priced at once in how a championship board prices a field, a contract that pays on a party rather than a candidate in the governor market guide, and a number that settles on an instrument in what settles a weather contract.

This guide is not legal advice and not financial advice. It explains how to read a market price and does not tell anyone what to do with one.