ESPN Scores Scraper

Extract public ESPN scoreboards for any sport, league and day, or resolve specific public espn.com game URLs into venue, city, TV-network and attendance detail. Every row is flat, typed and null-safe for research, alerting, spreadsheets and pipelines.

Why this actor?

• Two buyer-shaped modes: a whole league day, or one game's summary.
• One flat row per game: teams, scores, status, start time, venue and TV.
• Hard local result limits keep delivery and spend bounded.
• Invalid slugs, dates and URLs, empty league days and blocked requests are free error rows.
• Public JSON surface only: no login, no cookies, no challenge bypass, no media.

Input

{"mode":"scores","sport":"baseball","league":"mlb","dates":"20260916","maxResults":100}

For detail mode, set mode to detail and provide gameUrls (or eventIds with sport/league).

Input	Meaning
mode	scores (a league scoreboard) or detail (specific games).
sport	ESPN sport slug: baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer…
league	ESPN league slug: mlb, nba, nfl, nhl, wnba, college-football, eng.1…
dates	Scoreboard day as YYYYMMDD. Empty means the league's current card.
maxResults	Hard local cap on delivered rows and charges in scores mode.
gameUrls	Public espn.com game URLs for detail mode; deduplicated, capped at 50.
eventIds	Numeric ESPN event ids for detail mode; needs sport and league.
proxyConfiguration	Proxy for ESPN requests; datacenter is the default.

Output

{"mode":"scores","input":"baseball/mlb 20260916","event_id":"401816960","sport":"baseball","league":"mlb","league_name":"Major League Baseball","title":"Chicago White Sox at Cleveland Guardians","short_title":"CHW @ CLE","start_time":"2026-09-16T17:00Z","status":"finished","status_detail":"Final","home":"Cleveland Guardians","home_abbr":"CLE","home_score":6,"home_winner":true,"away":"Chicago White Sox","away_abbr":"CHW","away_score":3,"away_winner":false,"venue":"Progressive Field","city":"Cleveland","broadcasts":[],"attendance":null,"url":"https://www.espn.com/mlb/game/_/gameId/401816960/white-sox-guardians","error":null,"scraped_at":"2026-09-17T11:52:31.104Z"}

Field	Meaning
mode	Which mode produced the row: scores or detail.
input	sport/league [YYYYMMDD] in scores mode, or the game URL / event id in detail mode.
event_id	ESPN event id, also carried in the game URL.
sport	ESPN sport slug, e.g. baseball.
league	ESPN league slug, e.g. mlb.
league_name	Human league name, e.g. Major League Baseball.
title	Game title, "away at home".
short_title	Abbreviated title, e.g. "CHW @ CLE".
start_time	Scheduled start time, ISO 8601, exactly as published.
status	scheduled, live or finished.
status_detail	Upstream status line, e.g. Final, Final/10, 7:10 PM EDT.
home	Home team name.
home_abbr	Home team abbreviation.
home_score	Home score; null before play starts.
home_winner	Whether the home team won; null before a result.
away	Away team name.
away_abbr	Away team abbreviation.
away_score	Away score; null before play starts.
away_winner	Whether the away team won; null before a result.
venue	Venue name.
city	Venue city.
broadcasts	TV networks listing the game; detail mode only, always an array.
attendance	Announced attendance; detail mode only.
url	Canonical public game URL on espn.com.
error	Free per-input error; null on game rows.
scraped_at	Extraction timestamp.

Pricing

Pay per event, and the platform usage is on us — the price you see is the price you pay, with no compute bill on top.

Event	Price	What one charge buys
ESPN game row	$0.003	One delivered public ESPN game row. An invalid sport/league/date/game URL, a scoreboard day with no games, and an upstream block, 5xx or timeout are free error rows and are never charged.
Actor Start	$0.002	One run, whatever it returns.

Higher Apify subscription tiers pay less on every event (Silver −20%, Gold −35%).

Proxy

Requests use the Apify proxy configured in proxyConfiguration. The validated default is datacenter. This actor does not bypass challenges, log in, or read private pages.

Use cases

• Track a league day with scores, statuses and start times.
• Alert on a followed game's result or status change.
• Build a dated results dataset for a sport.
• Find the venue, city and TV networks of a specific game.

FAQ

Does this need an ESPN account? No. Only the public ESPN site JSON surface is read.

Do scheduled games have scores? Scores are 0 before play starts, and home_winner / away_winner are null until there is a result.

Why are broadcasts and attendance empty in scores mode? They come from the per-game summary, which only detail mode fetches; the keys are always present.

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This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with ESPN.