A college football futures price in cents is a shorthand for probability: divide by 100 and a 13c contract reads as roughly a 13 percent chance to win the national title. That first-pass number is close but high, because every raw price carries vig. The de-vigged fair value is the real probability estimate, and for the 13c co-favorites Ohio State and Notre Dame it lands at 10.8 percent.
What does a 13c futures price actually mean?
A title contract settles at 100c if the team wins and 0c if it does not. Price is therefore a direct wager on probability: the market is willing to pay 13c now for a payout worth 100c on a Ohio State or Notre Dame championship. Dividing price by payout gives the implied probability, so 13c maps to about 13 percent.
That conversion works for any contract on the board. Texas at 12c implies about 12 percent, Oregon at 11c near 11 percent, and Miami at 8c around 8 percent. The math is identical across venues; only the price differs. This is why prediction-market contracts read as probabilities in a way that fractional or American price formats do not.
Why do the prices add up to more than 100 percent?
Sum the raw implied probabilities across the full field and the total clears 100 percent. That excess is the overround, or vig: the cushion the market holds. Because it is spread across every contract, each raw price overstates the true chance by a small margin.
De-vigging removes it by scaling the field back toward a 100 percent total. The result is fair value. Ohio State and Notre Dame move from a 13c raw read to 10.8 percent, Texas from 12c to 10 percent, and Georgia from a 10c price to 8.6 percent. The gap between the cents and the fair value is the vig made visible.
Best price versus model fair value
The chart below pairs each team's cheapest available price with the model's de-vigged fair value. For most of the board the price sits above fair value, the expected signature of vig. The size of that gap is what a trader is reading when a contract looks rich or cheap.
When is the cheapest price below fair value?
The interesting cases are where the cheapest price sits under fair value, the reverse of the vig pattern. Miami is the clearest: an 8c best price against a 9.1 percent model fair value. Here the market's cheapest contract is priced below where the model sees the probability.
Indiana shows the more typical relationship, with a 9c price against an 8.3 percent fair value, a small premium consistent with vig. Reading probabilities is what separates the two: a price alone cannot tell a trader which side of fair value it sits on, but a de-vigged number can.
Where the cheapest prices live
Best price depends on venue, so the same probability can cost different amounts across exchanges. On the national-title favorites, Kalshi holds the cheapest prices, including the 13c reads on Ohio State and Notre Dame and 12c on Texas. Down the board, Polymarket leads on the longer shots: LSU at 6c against a 4.8 percent fair value, and Texas A&M and Texas Tech at 3c.
For a trader mapping cents to probability, the workflow is consistent: convert the price, compare it to the de-vigged fair value, then find the venue holding the cheapest contract. Kalshi's FADE and Polymarket's TGSWC are the relevant sign-up codes for the two venues that set most of this board. Prices and the model can both be wrong, and none of this is financial advice; the point is only to read a price for what it encodes, a probability.
