Glossary / Prices & odds / Closing line
A ParlayAPI glossary entry

Closing line

The closing line is the final price a market shows just before it closes - conventionally the sharp book's last pre-game price at the event's commence time. It is the market's most informed estimate of the outcome, and the reference point for CLV grading.

In practice

By close, the market has absorbed injuries, weather, lineups, and the weight of sharp money, which makes the closing price hard to beat and worth grading against. “The close” needs a convention to be comparable - which book, which snapshot, vigged or devigged - and sloppy conventions quietly corrupt CLV records. On picking a defensible convention: closing-line snapshot conventions.

Where it shows up in ParlayAPI

ParlayAPI archives 1.7M+ historical game closing lines with continuous depth back to 2005 (as of 2026-08) and 30M+ player-prop closing lines since June 2022, served from /v1/historical/sports/{sport_key}/odds - the raw material for CLV grading and closing-line backtests.

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