Draw No Bet: what it is and how it works

What is Draw No Bet?

A standard full-time result market has three possible outcomes:

Home win
Draw
Away win

Draw No Bet reduces that to a selection on either the home or away team.
If the selected team wins, the selection wins.
If the selected team loses, the selection loses.

If the fixture finishes as a draw, the selection is void under the standard market definition.
The important point is that the draw does not become a winning outcome. It becomes a void outcome.
That distinction separates Draw No Bet from markets such as Double Chance, where some selections win outright when the match finishes level.

How Draw No Bet settles

Suppose a product displays a Draw No Bet selection on the home team.

The settlement logic is:

Home wins 2-0 -> selection wins
Match draws 1-1 -> selection voids
Away wins 0-1 -> selection loses

The same logic works in reverse for an away-team selection.
A void should remain distinct from both a win and a loss in an application’s settlement data. Treating a returned stake as a winning selection can distort win-rate calculations and historical reporting.

The final financial settlement is handled by the bookmaker or operator, so an application should follow the settlement rules associated with the odds source it displays.

Draw No Bet vs a straight win market

The main difference is the draw.
In a three-way result market, backing the home team means only a home win produces a winning selection. Both the draw and away win are losing outcomes.
In Draw No Bet, the home win remains the winning result and the away win remains the losing result, but the draw becomes void.

That difference also affects pricing. A Draw No Bet price will normally differ from the equivalent straight-win price because the two selections have different settlement conditions.
For a data product, those prices should remain separate market records. Do not derive one by simply renaming the other.

An illustrative price example

Imagine an illustrative fixture where the home team is offered at decimal odds of 1.90 in the full-time result market.

The home Draw No Bet price might instead be:

Home win: 1.90
Home Draw No Bet: 1.45

These figures are examples only, not real Sportmonks odds.
If the home team wins, both selections can settle as winners according to their respective prices.
If the match finishes level, the straight home-win selection loses while the Draw No Bet selection is void under the standard rule.

If the away side wins, both lose.

This is a clearer way to explain the market than describing Draw No Bet as “safer” or “lower risk”. The objective difference is simply the treatment of one result and the corresponding price.

Draw No Bet vs Double Chance

Draw No Bet and Double Chance are frequently compared because both change how a draw affects settlement.

They are not the same market.
A home-or-draw Double Chance selection wins if the home team wins or the match finishes level.
A home Draw No Bet selection wins only if the home team wins. A draw voids the selection instead.

The difference can be summarised as:

Home win:
DNB home -> win
1X -> win

Draw:
DNB home -> void
1X -> win

Away win:
DNB home -> loss
1X -> loss

That difference should be preserved explicitly in an odds platform rather than mapping the two markets to the same internal outcome.

Draw No Bet and level Asian Handicap

Draw No Bet is also closely related in settlement terms to a level Asian Handicap on the same team.
A 0 or 0.0 Asian Handicap removes any goal advantage or disadvantage. If the selected team wins, the selection wins. If the fixture finishes level, the selection pushes or voids. If the team loses, the selection loses.

The naming and API market structures remain different, however.
For developers, that means equivalent-looking settlement behaviour does not justify merging the markets into one identifier. Keep the market returned by the odds feed intact.

Draw No Bet in the Sportmonks Odds API

Current Sportmonks v3 documentation lists Draw No Bet as:

market_id: 10

Sportmonks also includes Draw No Bet among the Standard Odds markets for which winning calculations are available. The current Odds FAQ is available at:

https://docs.sportmonks.com/v3/faq/odds

Older Sportmonks v2 documentation used:

market_id: 28082

for Draw No Bet.
That older identifier should not be copied into a new v3 implementation.

This difference is particularly important when migrating an existing odds product. A database containing old market IDs may need an explicit mapping layer rather than assuming the same numbers apply across API versions.

Why the market ID should come from current documentation

Market IDs are implementation details, not universal betting-market standards.
An operator may call the same concept Draw No Bet, DNB or another equivalent display label. Sportmonks gives the market a stable identifier within its own API model.
For a v3 integration, use the current market catalogue and odds documentation rather than an old blog post, spreadsheet or v2 code sample.

This is the same general rule that applies across odds integrations: store the provider’s market identity separately from the text displayed to the user.
That makes migrations, localisation and debugging easier because the UI label can change without altering the internal market mapping.

Working with Draw No Bet odds in a product

A betting platform normally needs to preserve several separate relationships around an odd: the fixture, market, bookmaker, selection and price.
The market answers the question being priced.
The selection identifies which team or outcome the price belongs to.
The bookmaker identifies the source.
The quoted value contains the actual price.

Keeping those fields separate makes it possible to compare the same Draw No Bet selection across several bookmakers without confusing the market definition with the offered price.

Sportmonks’ live Sports Betting API solution page is:

https://www.sportmonks.com/football-api/solutions/sports-betting-api/

It covers pre-match odds, in-play odds, markets and predictive data for betting-platform builders.

Draw No Bet and predictions

Prediction data and Draw No Bet odds should not be treated as the same thing.
A prediction model may estimate separate probabilities for a home win, draw and away win.
A bookmaker Draw No Bet price represents a market price under Draw No Bet settlement rules.
A platform can use probability data as one analytical input, but it should preserve the distinction between model output and bookmaker odds.
The live Sportmonks Football Predictions API page is:

https://www.sportmonks.com/football-api/football-predictions-api/

Sportmonks documents more than 20 prediction markets and exposes fixture probabilities through the same wider Football API ecosystem.

Common Draw No Bet implementation mistakes

One common mistake is recording a void as a win. That can inflate historical win rates and produce incorrect reporting.
Another is treating Draw No Bet and home-or-draw Double Chance as equivalent. They differ specifically when the match finishes level.
Developers should also avoid hard-coding the old v2 market ID 28082 into a v3 integration. Current Sportmonks documentation lists Draw No Bet as market 10.

Settlement scope also needs attention. Do not assume every operator treats extra time, abandoned matches or other unusual fixture states identically. Use the settlement rules attached to the bookmaker or product being represented.
Finally, keep odds and prediction probabilities separate. A model probability is not a bookmaker price, even when both relate to the same fixture outcome.

Building with Draw No Bet data

Draw No Bet is useful as a simple example of why betting-data models need more than a fixture ID and a number.
The application needs to know which market the price belongs to, which participant or outcome it represents, which bookmaker supplied it and which settlement rules apply.

That structure also makes the product easier to extend. Adding another market should not require rewriting the fixture model or inventing new fields for every betting type.
Sportmonks exposes odds alongside the broader football data required to identify the fixture and participants, allowing betting products to build those relationships around a consistent API structure.
For current odds and betting-platform capabilities, use the verified Sports Betting API page: