ESPN Scores & Schedules

Extract publicly available game scores and schedules from ESPN — no account, login, or proxy required. Supports 16 leagues across basketball, football, baseball, hockey, and soccer.

What This Scraper Does

This actor calls ESPN's public JSON API to retrieve game results, scores, and upcoming fixture data for any combination of supported leagues and dates. With Fetch Game Details enabled, each game record is enriched with top performers (leaders), betting odds, attendance, and game headlines.

Supported Leagues

Code	League	Sport
nba	NBA	Basketball
nfl	NFL	Football
mlb	MLB	Baseball
nhl	NHL	Hockey
mls	MLS	Soccer
wnba	WNBA	Basketball
ncaam	NCAA Men's Basketball	Basketball
ncaaw	NCAA Women's Basketball	Basketball
ncaaf	NCAA Football	Football
epl	English Premier League	Soccer
laliga	La Liga	Soccer
ucl	UEFA Champions League	Soccer
bundesliga	Bundesliga	Soccer
seriea	Serie A	Soccer
ligue1	Ligue 1	Soccer
ligamx	Liga MX	Soccer

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
Leagues	string[]	["nba"]	One or more league codes from the table above.
Date Mode	enum	today	today, yesterday, tomorrow, single, or range.
Date	string	—	YYYYMMDD — required when Date Mode is single.
Start Date	string	—	YYYYMMDD — required when Date Mode is range.
End Date	string	—	YYYYMMDD — required when Date Mode is range. Max span: 30 days.
Timezone	string	UTC	IANA timezone (e.g. America/New_York) for dateLocal and for resolving today/yesterday/tomorrow.
Fetch Game Details	boolean	false	Adds leaders, odds, attendance, and headlines per game. One extra request per game.
Max Items	integer	100	Cap on total records returned (1–10,000).

Date Mode Examples

Mode	What it fetches
today	Games scheduled or completed today in the given timezone
yesterday	Yesterday's final scores
tomorrow	Tomorrow's scheduled fixtures
single + date: "20240115"	All games on 15 January 2024
range + startDate: "20240101" + endDate: "20240107"	Seven days of games

Output

Each record represents one game. Fields marked ? are optional and appear only when ESPN provides them.

Core Fields (always present)

Field	Type	Description
gameId	string	ESPN event ID
league	string	League code e.g. "nba"
sport	string	Sport e.g. "basketball"
status	string	"scheduled", "in_progress", "final", "postponed", or "cancelled". Note: delayed games are reported as "scheduled" — check statusDetail for the text "Delayed".
statusDetail	string?	Human-readable detail e.g. "Q3 4:23", "Final", "7:30 PM ET"
date	string	ISO 8601 UTC kickoff time
dateLocal	string?	Kickoff in requested timezone
name	string	Full game name e.g. "Boston Celtics at Los Angeles Lakers"
shortName	string	Abbreviated matchup e.g. "BOS @ LAL"
homeTeam	object	{id, name, abbreviation, score, logo}
awayTeam	object	{id, name, abbreviation, score, logo}
venue	object?	{name, city, state, country}
broadcasts	string[]?	TV/streaming channels e.g. ["ESPN", "ABC"]
scrapedAt	string	ISO 8601 UTC scrape timestamp

Extra Fields (Fetch Game Details: true)

Field	Type	Description
leaders	object?	{home: [{name, position, stat, value}], away: [...]} — top performers
odds	object?	{provider, details, overUnder, spread} — pre-game betting line
attendance	integer?	Actual game attendance
headline	string?	Game recap or preview headline
gameNotes	string[]?	Notable notes e.g. records set, milestones

Error Records

If a league/date combination fails, the record contains:

Field	Description
inputLeague	The league code that was attempted
inputDate	The date string that was attempted
error	Human-readable error message
scrapedAt	Timestamp

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an ESPN account or API key? No. This scraper uses ESPN's public JSON API which is freely accessible without any login or authentication.

Is a proxy required? No. ESPN's public API has no bot protection. This scraper works out of the box on Apify cloud without any proxy configuration.

How do I get yesterday's NBA scores? Set Leagues to ["nba"] and Date Mode to yesterday. Run the actor and all final scores from the previous day will be in the dataset.

How do I get scores for multiple leagues at once? Add multiple codes to the Leagues array — e.g. ["nba", "nfl", "epl"]. Each league and date combination is fetched independently.

What does the score field look like for a scheduled game? The score field on homeTeam and awayTeam will be 0 for games that haven't started yet. Check the status field: a value of "scheduled" means the game has not begun.

What is the maximum date range? 30 days. Requesting a range larger than 30 days will return an error. For historical bulk data, run multiple 30-day range requests.

How often is the data updated? The actor fetches data live from ESPN's API at run time. For real-time in-game scores, schedule the actor to run every few minutes using Apify's scheduler.

What leagues are available for soccer? MLS (mls), English Premier League (epl), La Liga (laliga), UEFA Champions League (ucl), Bundesliga (bundesliga), Serie A (seriea), Ligue 1 (ligue1), and Liga MX (ligamx).