Player Prop Ladders: How Yardage and TD Contracts Work
A prop ladder is a stack of yes-or-no contracts on one player's stat line. Read together, they show the market's forecast.
Published 2026-11-06 · Data as of 2026-11-06 · Market & data intelligence · Educational, not advice.
A player-prop ladder is a set of event contracts on one stat, each at a higher threshold: 40+ yards, 60+, 80+, or 1+, 2+, 3+ touchdowns. Each rung is a separate yes-or-no contract traded between market participants. Prices must fall as the rungs rise, and the gap between two rungs is the market's implied chance of the player finishing in that band.
A sportsbook player prop usually gives you one number. A receiver is set at some yardage figure, you pick a side, and the book holds the other side at a price it chose.
A prediction market breaks that same question into a ladder: a stack of separate contracts, each asking whether the player reaches a higher threshold. Once you see how the rungs connect, a ladder tells you more than a single line does.
What a ladder actually is
Picture one receiver's yardage set out as several contracts. Will he record 40 or more receiving yards? 60 or more? 80 or more? 100 or more? Each one is its own binary contract. If the outcome happens, YES settles at $1. If it does not, YES settles at $0.
Touchdown ladders follow the same pattern with smaller steps: 1 or more, 2 or more, 3 or more. The first rung is similar to an anytime touchdown prop. The higher rungs ask about multi-score games.
The basic frame for a prediction market applies to every rung. Contracts are generally matched between buyers and sellers rather than set as a single house line, though how a venue handles liquidity and fees is set by its own rules. The price on a rung reflects where buyers and sellers have recently agreed, and venues may show the last trade, the bid and ask, or a midpoint. A YES price of 35 cents means someone paid 35 cents for YES and someone else accepted that, taking the NO side for 65 cents.
That price works as an implied probability. A rung trading near 35 cents means the market as a whole puts the chance at roughly 35 percent, give or take fees and the bid-ask spread.
Why the rungs have to price in order
Every ladder has one rule built into it: a higher rung can never be worth more than a lower one. If a player gets 80 yards, he has also passed 60 and 40. Every outcome that pays the 80+ contract pays the 60+ contract too. So the 60+ price should always be at least as high as the 80+ price.
When the ordering does slip for a moment, you are often looking at a thin market: a rung with few resting orders, where the last trade happened before news that the other rungs have already absorbed.
Reading the gaps between rungs
The price of each rung matters less than the difference between neighboring rungs. Suppose, just as an example, a ladder shows 60+ yards at 55 cents and 80+ at 30 cents. Subtract one from the other and the market is putting about a 25 percent chance on the player finishing between 60 and 79 yards.
Do that for every pair of rungs and you get an approximate implied distribution: the market's view of how the game might go for this player, in bands, not just a guess at the middle. A single sportsbook line gives you one point on that curve. A ladder gives you several, and so a rough shape.
That shape matters because player stats are lumpy. A receiver who might catch one deep ball has a very different curve from one who gets many short targets, even if their typical totals look alike. In the first case you may see the higher rungs holding more value than you would expect, because one big play can carry him over several rungs at once.
How touchdown ladders behave differently
Yardage moves in small steps. Touchdowns come in whole numbers, and most players score none in a typical game. So touchdown ladders tend to drop off steeply. The 1+ rung tends to carry most of the trading interest, and the 2+ and 3+ rungs are often low-priced contracts with thinner order books.
Low-priced contracts have a mechanical feature worth understanding. A one-cent bid-ask spread is a small slice of a 60-cent contract but a big slice of a 5-cent one. Fees eat into thin, cheap rungs in the same way. That is one reason the top of a touchdown ladder can look jumpier than the bottom. Less trading and wider spreads mean each individual trade moves the price more.
What moves ladder prices
Since prices come from trades between participants, ladders move whenever new information changes what buyers and sellers are willing to accept. The usual drivers:
- Injury and availability news. A teammate being ruled out can shift a player's whole curve in a few minutes.
- Game-environment changes. Expected game script, weather and pace all change how many chances a player is likely to get.
- In-game action. Where live trading is available, rungs resolve one by one as a player passes each threshold. Once a player passes 60 yards, the 60+ contract is likely to settle YES under its terms, and the action moves to the rungs above. Final settlement still follows the contract's written rules.
Read the rules before you read the price
Every contract settles on its own written terms, and those terms differ by venue and by market. Before you read anything into a price, check the details. Which official stat source decides settlement? Does overtime count? What happens if the player is inactive or leaves early? Two contracts that sound the same can settle differently, and that difference is part of what the price reflects.
The same goes for comparing venues. When more than one venue lists similar player markets, their prices on matching rungs won't always line up. Liquidity, fees and settlement wording all play a part. Seeing those differences is useful price information on its own terms.
The takeaway
A ladder is a set of linked questions, and each one is priced by trades between market participants. Read the rungs together and you can see the market's view of a player's day: the likely middle, the spread of outcomes, and how much weight sits on a big game.
Sources
This explainer quotes no live prices. These are the regulator and platform pages that define how event contracts work.
References for this topic
- CFTC: Prediction markets (Learn and Protect)cftc.gov
- Kalshi Help Centerhelp.kalshi.com
- Polymarket documentation: Polymarket 101docs.polymarket.com
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