TheSportsDB Scraper — Teams, Players & Match Results | $2/1K | Free API

For sports app developers, fantasy sports platforms, betting data pipelines, and sports analytics teams that need clean, structured multi-sport data without managing API auth and rate limits.

$2.00 per 1,000 results (teams, players, or match events). Zero proxy cost — TheSportsDB has a public free API. Bring your own premium key for higher rate limits.

This actor calls TheSportsDB's official public API. No scraping, no access friction — pure structured JSON from the source. One actor, 20+ sports.

Source	Cost	Structured JSON?	MCP-ready?	Multi-sport?
This actor	$2/1k	Yes	Yes	Yes
TheSportsDB directly	Free (rate-limited)	Yes	No	Yes
SportRadar API	$$$ (enterprise)	Yes	No	Yes
RapidAPI sports APIs	$5-50/mo	Partial	No	Partial

Scrape sports data from TheSportsDB official free API. Search teams by name or league, find players, and retrieve upcoming or past match results — all via the official public JSON API with no proxy, no authentication, and zero COGS.

Features

• Teams — search any team by name or browse all teams in a league. Returns team metadata: ID, sport, league, country, stadium, founding year, badge image URL.
• Players — search players by name. Returns position, nationality, DOB, status, photo URL.
• Events — retrieve upcoming or past match events for given team IDs. Past events include final scores; upcoming events show venue and kickoff date.
• parse_confidence — every row carries a quality score (0.0–1.0) and a warnings list so you can detect drift or incomplete records automatically.
• Optional API key — works out of the box with the free public test key 3. Supply your own premium key for higher rate limits.
• Pay per result — you only pay for records returned, not for empty pages.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	teams	teams / players / events
searchQueries	string[]	["Arsenal"]	Team or player names to search
leagues	string[]	[]	League names to browse all teams for
teamIds	string[]	[]	Team IDs for event mode
eventType	string	next	next (upcoming) or last (past with scores)
maxItems	integer	100	Max total items (0 = unlimited)
apiKey	string	(test key)	Optional premium API key
requestDelayMs	integer	200	ms between requests

Output schema

Every row has entity_type = "team" / "player" / "event" plus these fields:

Field	Populated for
name	all
team_id / event_id / player_id	respective entity type
sport	all
league	teams, events; also holds team name for players
country / nationality	teams / players
stadium / formed_year / badge_url	teams
position / date_of_birth / player_status / photo_url	players
date / home_team / away_team / home_score / away_score / venue / event_status	events
parse_confidence	all (1.0 = all fields present)
warnings	all (list of missing-field codes)

Example: get all Premier League teams

{
  "mode": "teams",
  "leagues": ["English Premier League"]
}

Example: get upcoming Arsenal matches

{
  "mode": "events",
  "teamIds": ["133604"],
  "eventType": "next"
}

Pricing

Pay per result (sports-item event). Default: $2.00 per 1,000 records.

Pricing example: All 20 Premier League teams = $0.04. 5 teams × upcoming 5 events each = 25 events = $0.05. 1,000 player records = $2.00.

FAQ

Do I need an API key or proxy? No. The actor works out of the box with TheSportsDB's free public test key 3 — no account, no proxy, no extra setup. Optionally supply your own premium key for higher rate limits.

What sports are covered? TheSportsDB covers 20+ sports: soccer, basketball, baseball, American football, hockey, tennis, cricket, rugby, and more. Use mode=teams with a league name to see all teams for any sport.

How do I find a team ID? Run mode=teams with searchQueries: ["Arsenal"] — the response includes team_id (e.g. 133604). Use that ID in mode=events to get match results.

What happens if a query returns no results? The actor logs a warning and continues to the next query — it never crashes. Empty results are not charged.

Can I export results to Google Sheets or Airtable? Yes — connect via the n8n or Make integration, or use the Apify dataset export (JSON, CSV, or Excel).

Data source

TheSportsDB — community-built sports database with official REST API. Free test key 3 is publicly documented. Not affiliated with TheSportsDB.

parse_confidence trust score

Every row carries a parse_confidence score (0.0–1.0) and a warnings list so you can detect drift or incomplete records automatically.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This actor is available as an MCP tool for Claude, GPT-4o, or any MCP-compatible agent.

Config: https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=bovi/sportsdb-scraper

Integrations

Built for sports-app developers, fantasy platforms, and analytics teams ingesting multi-sport team, player, and match data — the JSON/dataset output drops into the tools you already run, no glue code:

• n8n / Make / Zapier — trigger a run or pipe every new dataset item into 500+ apps (Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, HubSpot, your database) with no code: n8n, Make, Zapier.
• Webhooks — fire your own endpoint the moment a run finishes, to push results straight into your pipeline (docs).
• MCP server — expose this actor as a tool to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client so an AI agent can pull this data mid-conversation (guide).
• API & SDKs — fetch the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel through the Apify REST API or the Python / JS SDKs.

See all Apify integrations.

Legal

TheSportsDB data is community-maintained and publicly documented under their API terms. Scraping public API endpoints of a service that explicitly provides a public API key for that purpose is consistent with standard API usage.