ESPN Sports Scraper

ESPN Sports Scraper extracts sports data from espn.com's public API: live and final scores with period-by-period line scores, team box-score totals and top performers, a team's full season schedule, standings, team directories, professional rosters, injury reports and news headlines. It covers the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, college football and basketball, MLS, the Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, the Champions League, Liga MX and any other team-sport league ESPN lists. Every row is flat, typed JSON (ISO dates, numbers as numbers). Plain HTTP: no browser, no login, no API key, no proxy.

Looking for betting lines (spread, total, moneyline, opening and closing odds)? They are not in this Actor. Our Sports Betting Odds Scraper is built on the same ESPN feed and returns one row per game and sportsbook.

What you get

Pick one dataType per run:

dataType	One row per	Main fields
games	game on the chosen days	teams, start time, status, score, line score per quarter / period / inning, winner, attendance, venue, TV, recap headline, team stats, top performers, soccer goals and red cards
schedule	game in a team's season	the same game fields for every past and upcoming game of the teams you name (soccer: results and fixtures)
standings	team in a table	group (conference / division / table), place, W-L-T, OT losses, win %, points, goals or points for / against, games behind, streak, playoff seed, clinch flag, home / road / last-10 / division / conference records, qualification zone
teams	team	ESPN id, name, abbreviation, colours, logo, venue, current record, standing summary, next game
rosters	player (pro leagues)	name, jersey, position, position group, age, height, weight, birthplace, college, years in the league, injury status, headshot
injuries	injury (NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL)	player, team, status (Out, Questionable, IR, Day-To-Day...), injury, detail, side, expected return, fantasy status, short note, last update
news	article	headline, summary, type, author, published time, tagged teams and athletes, image, link

A SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists what was found and saved per league, the requests made and any ESPN error.

Use cases

• Results and scores feeds: schedule a run every morning (the default covers yesterday and today) and push last night's finals to a Google Sheet, Slack channel or website widget.
• Fantasy sports and betting research: the injury report with return dates, team stats and top performers per game, plus standings and streaks, in one place.
• Sports apps and newsletters: team directories with logos and colours, full season calendars, and the latest headlines per team.
• Data science: build season tables of results with line scores, attendance and venues for models and dashboards.
• AI agents: give an LLM a clean JSON answer to "who won last night?", "who is injured for the Bears?" or "what is the Premier League table?".

Input

Scores for the last two days (default) in five leagues:

{
    "dataType": "games",
    "leagues": ["nba", "nhl", "nfl", "mlb", "epl"],
    "maxItems": 30
}

The 2025 season of two teams:

{
    "dataType": "schedule",
    "leagues": ["nfl", "epl"],
    "teams": ["Bears", "Arsenal"],
    "season": 2025
}

Other examples: {"dataType": "standings", "leagues": ["nfl"], "standingsLevel": "division"}, {"dataType": "injuries", "leagues": ["nfl", "nba"]}, {"dataType": "rosters", "leagues": ["nba"], "teams": ["LAL", "BOS"]}, {"dataType": "news", "leagues": ["nba"], "teams": ["Lakers"], "newsLimit": 10}.

• leagues: nfl, ncaaf, nba, wnba, ncaab, mlb, nhl, mls, epl, laliga, bundesliga, seriea, ligue1, ucl, ligamx. customLeagues takes any other ESPN path such as soccer/ned.1, soccer/uefa.europa or football/cfl.
• teams: abbreviation (LAL), full name, nickname (Lakers) or ESPN id (13). Filters every data type; for news each team gets its own feed.
• dateFrom / dateTo / days (games): US Eastern game days; today, yesterday, -3, +2 work too. Empty = yesterday and today. NFL and college football without dates return ESPN's current week. Up to 31 days per run.
• gameStates: pre, in, post (games and schedule).
• season, seasonType (schedule) and standingsLevel (default, overall, division).
• includeTeamDetails (teams, on), includePlayerNotes (injuries, off), newsLimit (1-50).
• maxItems is exact and global; duplicates (the same game seen on two team schedules) are saved and charged once.

Output example

A finished Premier League match from a games run:

{
    "recordType": "game",
    "gameId": "401879263",
    "league": "epl",
    "leagueName": "English Premier League",
    "sport": "soccer",
    "season": 2026,
    "shortName": "SUN @ BOU",
    "startTime": "2026-10-18T13:00:00.000Z",
    "status": "post",
    "statusDetail": "FT",
    "homeTeam": "AFC Bournemouth",
    "homeTeamAbbr": "BOU",
    "homeScore": 2,
    "homeForm": "DWLLW",
    "awayTeam": "Sunderland",
    "awayScore": 0,
    "winner": "home",
    "winnerTeam": "AFC Bournemouth",
    "attendance": 12004,
    "venue": "Vitality Stadium",
    "broadcast": "Peacock",
    "headline": "Bournemouth ease past 10-man Sunderland",
    "goals": [
        { "minute": "6'", "team": "BOU", "player": "Marcus Tavernier", "type": "Goal - Header", "penalty": false, "ownGoal": false },
        { "minute": "48'", "team": "BOU", "player": "Evanilson", "type": "Goal", "penalty": false, "ownGoal": false }
    ],
    "redCards": [{ "minute": "17'", "team": "SUN", "player": "Kevin Danso" }],
    "homeStats": { "possessionPct": 65, "totalShots": 29, "shotsOnTarget": 6, "wonCorners": 5, "foulsCommitted": 16 },
    "espnUrl": "https://www.espn.com/soccer/match/_/gameId/401879263/sunderland-afc-bournemouth",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-10-21T16:52:10.412Z"
}

(Shortened for reading; real rows always carry every field, with null when ESPN has no value. Basketball, hockey, football and baseball rows add homeLinescores / awayLinescores and homeLeaders / awayLeaders, e.g. {"category": "Points", "player": "Jalen Duren", "value": "22"}.)

A standings row:

{
    "recordType": "standing", "league": "nfl", "season": 2026, "group": "AFC East", "parentGroup": "American Football Conference",
    "groupRank": 1, "team": "Buffalo Bills", "teamAbbr": "BUF", "gamesPlayed": 6, "wins": 5, "losses": 1, "ties": 0,
    "winPercent": 0.833, "pointsFor": 197, "pointsAgainst": 171, "pointDifferential": 26, "gamesBehind": 0, "streak": "W2",
    "playoffSeed": 2, "homeRecord": "2-1", "awayRecord": "3-0", "divisionRecord": "0-1", "conferenceRecord": "3-1"
}

Pricing

Pay per event: each row saved (sports-record) is charged once, plus a tiny amount of Apify platform usage. No proxy cost. See the Pricing tab for current prices; paid Apify plans get lower rates.

Typical row counts:

Run	Rows
Default input (5 leagues, yesterday + today, capped at 30)	30
One NFL week of games	14-16
A team's full NBA regular season	~80
Every NBA roster	~540
NFL + NBA + MLB + NHL injury reports	~680

How it compares

• Other ESPN score scrapers return games and scores only. This Actor adds line scores, team stats, top performers, soccer scorers, standings, rosters, injuries, team schedules and news.
• Official sports data APIs are complete but sold as monthly contracts. This is pay-as-you-go and needs no key.
• Scraping espn.com pages with a browser is slow and fragile; the JSON API behind the site is fast and stable.

Limits, honestly: no play-by-play, no individual box scores, no betting odds (see the odds Actor above), no individual sports (golf, tennis, F1, UFC). Rosters are offered for professional leagues only.

Integrations

Use the Apify API or the dataset export (JSON, CSV, Excel), schedules and webhooks, or connect Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets and Airbyte. AI agents can call it as a tool through Apify's MCP server or from LangChain and LlamaIndex.

FAQ

Is it legal? The Actor reads the public JSON that powers espn.com, without login or circumvention, and stores sports facts: teams, scores, tables and public information about professional athletes as published by ESPN. Dates of birth and contract amounts are deliberately left out. Respect ESPN's terms for how you reuse the data.

Do I need a proxy? No. ESPN accepts direct requests. If the platform's IP is ever refused, the Actor retries with other browser headers and then Apify Proxy (datacenter) on its own.

Why did a league return nothing? No games on those days, a college league without teams for schedule, or a league ESPN has no injury report for. The log and the SUMMARY record say which.

How fresh is it? Live from ESPN at run time. Schedule it as often as you need.

Changelog

• 0.1 (October 2026): first release. Seven data types, 15 leagues plus custom ESPN paths, team filter, exact maxItems, pay-per-row pricing.

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En español

ESPN Sports Scraper extrae datos deportivos de la API pública de ESPN: marcadores en vivo y finales con parciales por cuarto, periodo o entrada, estadísticas por equipo y figuras del partido, goleadores y tarjetas rojas en fútbol, calendario completo de la temporada de un equipo, tablas de posiciones, equipos (sede, récord, próximo partido), planteles de ligas profesionales, partes de lesiones y noticias. Ligas: NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, fútbol americano y básquetbol universitario, MLS, Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Champions League, Liga MX y cualquier otra liga por equipos de ESPN. Sin navegador, sin login y sin proxy. Las cuotas de apuestas están en nuestro Sports Betting Odds Scraper. Consulta la pestaña Pricing para ver los precios actuales; los planes de pago de Apify tienen tarifas más bajas.