ESPN Scraper: Live Scores API & Sports Scores

💰 $1.50 / 1 000 events  ·  pay only for results  ·  no credit card to try

We do the dirty work so your dataset stays clean. 😈

An ESPN scraper and ESPN API alternative that returns scoreboards as clean, flat rows: fixtures, live and final scores, status, venues, betting odds and broadcasters, one row per event, across a date range and several leagues in a single run. Think of it as a live scores API without the date-loop, dedupe and retry plumbing.

🎯 What this scrapes

ESPN's public scoreboard data for seven leagues: English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL. Each row is one event with teams, scores, game state, start time, venue, city, odds line, over/under, broadcasters and a link to the ESPN summary page. This sports scores scraper covers scoreboards only; standings, rosters and play-by-play are not included.

🔥 Features

• Multi-league, multi-day in one run. Pick up to seven leagues and a range of up to 31 days.
• We dedupe for you. Each event appears once per league, however many days overlap.
• We derive the winner. When ESPN omits it, we work it out from the final score.
• We retry with exponential backoff on 408 / 429 / 5xx and honour Retry-After.
• We keep the dataset clean. Pydantic-validated rows, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable ids.
• A bad day never sinks the run. A failed league-day is logged and skipped; the rest still land.

💡 Use cases

• App and bot builders who need a live scores API feeding a score ticker or Discord bot.
• Betting and analytics hobbyists tracking odds lines next to final results.
• Newsletter and fantasy authors pulling the day's fixtures and finals on a schedule.
• Researchers building a dataset of results by league and date.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Choose one or more leagues.
2. Set startDate and endDate (empty means today, UTC).
3. Set maxEvents to cap how many rows you pay for.
4. Run it, then export to JSON, CSV or Excel, or pull the dataset through the Apify API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
leagues	array<string>	no	["soccer/eng.1"]	1 to 7 of soccer/eng.1, soccer/esp.1, soccer/ita.1, basketball/nba, football/nfl, baseball/mlb, hockey/nhl.
startDate	string	no	today (UTC)	First day, inclusive, YYYY-MM-DD.
endDate	string	no	startDate	Last day, inclusive. Range up to 31 days.
maxEvents	integer	no	100	Hard cap on rows for the run (1 to 10000).
proxyConfiguration	object	no	direct	Optional. Direct is the default; enable Apify Proxy for very large ranges.

Example input

{
  "leagues": ["soccer/eng.1", "football/nfl"],
  "startDate": "2026-10-10",
  "endDate": "2026-10-11",
  "maxEvents": 40
}

📤 Output

One row per event.

Field	Type	Notes
event_id	string	ESPN event id.
league	string	sport/league key.
league_name	string | null	League display name.
event_name	string	Full event name.
short_name	string | null	Short event name.
start_time	string	ISO 8601 UTC.
status_state	string	pre, in or post.
status_detail	string | null	Human readable status.
completed	boolean	Whether the event finished.
home_team, away_team	string	Team display names.
home_score, away_score	integer | null	Scores.
winner	string | null	Null for draws and unfinished events.
venue, city	string | null	Where it is played.
odds_details, over_under	string | null, number | null	First odds provider.
broadcasts	array<string>	Empty when none.
url	string | null	ESPN summary page.
scraped_at	string	Run time, ISO 8601 UTC.

Example output

{
  "event_id": "401879268",
  "league": "soccer/eng.1",
  "league_name": "English Premier League",
  "event_name": "Leeds United at Arsenal",
  "short_name": "LEE @ ARS",
  "start_time": "2026-10-10T11:30:00Z",
  "status_state": "pre",
  "completed": false,
  "home_team": "Arsenal",
  "away_team": "Leeds United",
  "home_score": 0,
  "away_score": 0,
  "winner": null,
  "venue": "Emirates Stadium",
  "city": "London",
  "odds_details": "ARS -265",
  "over_under": 2.5,
  "broadcasts": ["USA Net", "Universo"],
  "scraped_at": "2026-10-07T12:00:00Z"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-per-event. No subscription, no minimum.

Event	Price
Actor start	$0.20 per run
Result	$0.0015 per event row ($1.50 / 1 000)

A typical run lands at $1.70 per 1,000 results: the $0.20 start fee plus 1,000 × $0.0015 per event row. You pay only for rows that land.

You pay only for results that land. A run that finds no events is charged only the start fee.

🚧 Limitations

• Scoreboards only: no standings, rosters, box scores or play-by-play.
• Seven leagues in this version; more are added once verified.
• Odds appear for soccer and NFL; NBA, MLB and most NHL events have none, and those fields are null.
• Up to 31 days per run.
• Scoreboard data belongs to its owner; we return facts only, no logos or media.

❓ FAQ

Is this an official ESPN API? No. It is an independent ESPN scraper that reads ESPN's public scoreboard data and returns it as a tidy dataset.

Does it return live scores? Yes, for events in progress at the moment of the run. Each run is a snapshot; schedule it for continuous updates.

What if a day has no games? The run succeeds with zero rows and a status message saying what was searched.

💬 Your feedback

Found a league you need or a field that is off? Tell us through the Actor's Issues tab and we will take a look.