How to add prediction markets to an online casino
A prediction-markets tab is a different product on the same wallet, the same account and the same licence. The work is not the front end. It is the catalogue, the pricing, the execution and the settlement behind it. Here is the division that makes it a small project instead of a platform build.
A prediction-markets tab looks like a front-end project and is not one. The screen is the cheap part. What decides whether the project finishes is everything behind it: where the markets come from, what a displayed price is allowed to mean, what happens when a player presses buy, and who is authoritative when a market resolves.
What you already have
You have the parts that are expensive to acquire and impossible to outsource: a licence, a KYC pipeline, a wallet, a support function and a customer who is already logged in. A prediction-markets tab should not need a second one of any of those. If a vendor asks you to stand up a separate balance or a separate login, the integration has stopped being a tab and become a second product.
What you would otherwise have to build
The work sits in four layers, and each one is larger than it looks from the outside.
- A normalised catalogue
- Venues disagree about what a market is. One publishes a question with two outcomes, another publishes a ladder of thresholds under a single event, and both change shape without warning. Normalising that into one model, and keeping it normalised as venues change, is continuous work rather than a one-off import.
- Pricing that means something
- A number on a card and a number a player can trade at are different numbers. Getting that distinction wrong is the single most expensive mistake available in this domain, because it is invisible until somebody is charged.
- Execution with protection
- Between a player pressing buy and the order reaching a venue, the price can move. An integration needs a limit on what it will pay, idempotency so a retry cannot double a bet, and a clean refusal when the market has moved past what was quoted.
- Settlement and reconciliation
- Markets resolve on the venue’s timetable, not yours. Positions have to be marked while they are open, settled when the outcome is published, and reconcilable afterwards against what the venue actually said.
The division that makes it small
The integration is finishable when the line is drawn in one place: you keep the player and everything regulated that comes with them, and the market infrastructure sits behind an interface. In practice that is one server endpoint to mint a session for a player you have already authenticated, one embedded surface, and one message listener so your page hears about what happened inside it.
The player never leaves your wallet, and you never hold a second balance. That is the whole test of whether a prediction-markets tab is really a tab.
The embedded model sets out exactly which responsibilities move and which stay with you, and the House Money case study shows what that looks like on a live operator.
What to ask a vendor
Three questions separate an infrastructure provider from a widget. Is the price I show the price my player can trade at, and if not, what is the difference? What happens to an order when the market moves between the quote and the fill? And when a market settles, whose record is authoritative: yours, or the venue's?
If those answers are vague, the integration will be finished by your team rather than theirs. Prediction markets for casinos covers the commercial shape; the API surface is documented here.
Read next
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Add prediction markets to what you already run
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