Pinnacle API

Overview

Pinnacle (formerly Pinnacle Sports) is a sharp bookmaker known for offering the most efficient odds in the industry, particularly for football, American sports, and tennis. Their business model is high-volume, low-margin — they accept professional bettors and maintain sharp lines through market forces. This makes Pinnacle's closing odds the most reliable benchmark for market efficiency and CLV validation.

Pinnacle offers a public REST API for accessing pre-game and live odds. The API is free to access but requires a funded Pinnacle account and API approval. Documentation is available on the official GitHub repository.

API Requirements

  • Funded account: Active, funded Pinnacle account required
  • API approval: Pinnacle reviews API access requests; approval is not guaranteed
  • HTTP Basic Auth: Username and password from API credentials
  • Rate limits: Per documentation

Key Endpoints

Endpoint Purpose
GET /v1/sports List available sports and sport IDs
GET /v1/sports/{sport_id}/feed Get available events for a sport
GET /v1/events/{event_id} Get odds for a specific event

Data Available

Data Available Notes
Pre-game odds ✅ Moneyline, spread, totals, props
Live odds ✅ Real-time updates
Closing odds ✅ Available historically via data providers
Match results ❌ Not provided
Statistics ❌ Not provided

Using Pinnacle Closing Odds for CLV

import pandas as pd

def calculate_clv(model_prob, pinnacle_close_odds, bet_odds):
    """
    Calculate CLV using Pinnacle as the benchmark.
    """
    prob_close = 1 / pinnacle_close_odds
    clv = model_prob - prob_close
    return clv

# Example: Model says 55% win probability, bet at 1.85, Pinnacle closed at 1.80
model_prob = 0.55
pinnacle_close = 1.80
bet_odds = 1.85

clv = calculate_clv(model_prob, pinnacle_close, bet_odds)
print(f"CLV: {clv:.2%}")  # Positive = beating the sharp line

Notes

  • Pinnacle's API access is not guaranteed — approval is at their discretion
  • Their closing lines are the gold standard for CLV measurement
  • As of mid-2025, Pinnacle's public API data has become unreliable (systematically out of date). Use Football-Data.co.uk Pinnacle closing odds columns as a fallback.
  • Pinnacle is known for limiting successful bettors — this is why their odds are sharp: sharp bettors self-select in
  • For market efficiency analysis, comparing the model's predictions to Pinnacle's line is more meaningful than comparing to soft books