Sports MCP Server - ESPN MCP for Scores, Injuries & Odds

Give Claude, Cursor or your own AI agent live sports data in one connection. This Sports MCP server answers questions like "Who is out for the Chiefs on Monday?", "How far has the Broncos-Chiefs total moved since it opened?" or "Show me the Premier League table" straight from ESPN's public data, with no ESPN API key and nothing to host.

Built for:

• Sports betting research - bookmaker spreads, totals and moneylines with the opening line and how far each line has moved, next to the injury report that moved it.
• Fantasy and sports analytics - injury status with the latest analyst note, standings, team schedules and results as clean JSON.
• AI agents and chat assistants - seven small tools with short, token-efficient answers and plain-English error messages your agent can act on.

Leagues: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Men's Basketball, Premier League, LALIGA, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, MLS and the UEFA Champions League.

What makes this ESPN MCP server different

• Injury reports are a tool of their own. Every NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA injury on ESPN with status (Out, Questionable, Day-To-Day, Injured Reserve), the ESPN athlete id and the latest analyst note, most recent first.
• Line movement, not just the line. For each upcoming game the odds tool returns the current spread, total and moneylines and the opening numbers, plus spreadMove, totalMove and favoriteFlipped. Upcoming games are read first and finished games are skipped (ask with includeFinished for closing lines). In-game lines (for example "DraftKings - Live Odds") are marked isLive: true and carry no opening-line movement, because comparing a live line with the pre-game opener means nothing. MLB odds that are missing from ESPN's scoreboard are read from ESPN's per-game odds feed, so baseball lines are not silently dropped.
• You pay only when you get what you asked for. A failed call (ESPN refused or did not answer), an invalid argument, an empty answer ("no games today", "no odds posted yet", "no injuries for that team") and a scoreboard for a different day than the one you asked for are not charged. list_leagues is always free.
• "Today" means today. Game dates are the US Eastern game day, so a Sunday night kick-off at 00:20 UTC is still dated Sunday. When you ask for today's scoreboard and there are no games, ESPN shows its next game day instead; the answer starts with "No NBA games today (2026-09-13, US Eastern); ESPN's next games are on ..." and is not charged.
• No silent empty results. ESPN answers some league and feed combinations with an empty 200 response (for example injuries for any soccer league). That looks like "nobody is injured" but means "no feed". This server refuses those combinations up front and says why, instead of returning an empty list as if it were a fact.
• Scores are null before kick-off, never 0, so an unplayed game never reads as a 0-0 draw.

Connect

MCP endpoint (Streamable HTTP):

https://neverempty--sports-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp

Authenticate with your Apify API token (Apify Console → Settings → API & Integrations), either as a header Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN> or as ?token=<APIFY_TOKEN> on the URL. Both forms were checked against the live server on 2026-09-14; a request with no token is rejected by Apify.

Claude Code

$claude mcp add --transport http sports https://neverempty--sports-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>"

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json, via the mcp-remote bridge). The token goes in env and the header is written Authorization:${AUTH_HEADER} with no space after the colon: this is the workaround the mcp-remote README gives for Claude Desktop on Windows (and Cursor), which do not escape spaces inside args.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sports": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://neverempty--sports-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp", "--header", "Authorization:${AUTH_HEADER}"],
      "env": { "AUTH_HEADER": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json) and other clients that accept a URL with headers

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sports": {
      "url": "https://neverempty--sports-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>" }
    }
  }
}

Any MCP client - if your client only takes a URL, use https://neverempty--sports-mcp-server.apify.actor/mcp?token=<APIFY_TOKEN>. Keep that URL private: it contains your token.

The server is stateless: every request is answered on its own, so it works with clients that do not keep a session.

Tools

Every tool returns two text parts: a one-line summary for the model to read, then compact JSON.

Tool	Arguments	Leagues	Charged
list_leagues	none	all 14	never
get_scoreboard	league, date (YYYY-MM-DD US Eastern; omit for today, or the current week for nfl / ncaaf), limit (1-200, default 100)	all 14	when games are returned for the day you asked for
get_injuries	league, team, status (e.g. Out), limit (1-500, default 50)	nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, wnba	when reports are returned
get_odds	league, date, team, maxGames (1-20, default 8), includeFinished (default false)	nfl, nba, mlb, nhl	when at least one line is returned
get_standings	league, team (optional)	nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, wnba, ncaaf, epl, laliga, bundesliga, mls	when teams are returned
get_news	league, limit (1-50, default 10)	nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, wnba, ncaaf, epl, laliga	when articles are returned
get_team_schedule	league, team, season (e.g. 2025), seasonType (preseason / regular / postseason), which (upcoming / completed / all), limit - each game has start time, home team, away team, season type, state, score and winner	nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, wnba, epl	when games are returned

League keys: nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, wnba, ncaaf, ncaab, epl, laliga, bundesliga, seriea, ligue1, mls, ucl. How team is matched: an exact abbreviation, ESPN team id, full name, city or nickname wins (KC, Chiefs, Brooklyn Nets, Texas). Otherwise the words you give must appear as whole words in the team name (Kansas City). Parts of words never match, so Nets never matches Charlotte Hornets and NE never matches Tennessee. When several teams qualify, only the exact matches are kept, so Texas returns Texas Longhorns, not Texas Tech or Texas A&M (ask for those by name).

Example output (real calls to the live server, 2026-09-14)

get_injuries { "league": "nfl", "team": "KC", "limit": 5 }

NFL: 800 injury report(s) on ESPN, 25 for team "KC"; 5 most recent returned. Status: Active 20, Out 3, Injured Reserve 2.
{"league":"nfl","teamsInFeed":32,"reportsTotal":800,"reportsMatched":25,"injuries":[{"athlete":"Chris Jones","athleteId":"3044859","team":"Kansas City Chiefs","teamAbbreviation":"KC","position":"DT","status":"Active","reportedAt":"2026-09-12T19:46:00.000Z","comment":"Jones (calf) does not have an injury designation ahead of Monday night's game against the Broncos."}, ...]}

get_odds { "league": "nfl", "team": "KC" }

NFL: 1 line(s) from 1 game(s). Upcoming games first. Moneylines are American odds; *Move columns are current minus opening line.
{"odds":[{"game":"DEN @ KC","startTime":"2026-09-15T00:15:00.000Z","state":"pre","provider":"DraftKings","isLive":false,"details":"KC -2.5","spread":-2.5,"overUnder":43.5,"homeMoneyLine":-135,"awayMoneyLine":114,"openSpread":-2.5,"openOverUnder":42.5,"spreadMove":0,"totalMove":1,"favoriteFlipped":false}]}

get_scoreboard { "league": "nfl" }

NFL: 16 game(s) (post 10, in 4, pre 2). Scores are null before a game starts, never 0.
{"gamesTotal":16,"games":[{"gameId":"401872928","state":"in","status":"In Progress","startTimeUtc":"2026-09-13T20:25Z","homeTeam":"Las Vegas Raiders","awayTeam":"Miami Dolphins","homeScore":27,"awayScore":13,"venue":"Allegiant Stadium","period":4}, ...]}

get_standings { "league": "epl" }

Premier League standings 2026-27 English Premier League: 20 team(s) in 1 group(s).
{"standings":[{"teamId":"359","team":"Arsenal","abbreviation":"ARS","wins":4,"losses":0,"ties":0,"gamesPlayed":4,"points":12,"rank":1,"pointsFor":8,"pointsAgainst":1,"pointDifferential":7,"note":"Champions League"}, ...]}

get_team_schedule { "league": "mlb", "team": "NYY", "which": "completed", "limit": 3 }

New York Yankees 2026 Regular Season: 166 game(s) on ESPN, 3 completed returned, record 86-63.
{"games":[{"shortName":"NYM @ NYY","state":"post","status":"Final","homeScore":6,"awayScore":4,"winner":"New York Yankees","venue":"Yankee Stadium"}, ...]}

An error tells the model what failed and that nothing was charged, for example:

ESPN does not recognise team "zzz" in NFL (HTTP 400: Bad request for team with value: zzz). Use the team abbreviation (for example KC) or the numeric teamId from get_standings. This call was not charged.

Measured on the Apify platform (2026-09-14)

• Every ESPN request made from the Apify network in the checks above answered HTTP 200 without a proxy.
• The full NFL injury feed is an 8.86 MB response; the tool answered in 641 ms once the server was running.
• The other tools answered in 194-305 ms. The first request after the server has been idle waits for it to start (about 5 seconds in our check).

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.01 per successful tool call on the Apify Free plan, lower on paid Apify plans (down to $0.007). Calls that return no data, scoreboards for a different day than the one asked for, calls ESPN refused or could not answer, invalid arguments and list_leagues are not charged. If your run has a maximum total charge, the server counts calls that are still in progress against it and refuses a call before contacting ESPN once the limit would be reached, so several simultaneous calls cannot go over the limit.

Starting the Actor normally (the Start button in Apify Console, the API, or a schedule) does not start a long-running server. The run asks ESPN for the NFL scoreboard once, writes a single health-check row (status, the MCP URL, the tool list and ESPN's answer) and finishes in a few seconds. That run is not charged. To use the tools, connect an MCP client to the URL above.

Limits and what is not included

• Not an official ESPN product. Data comes from ESPN's public site endpoints and can change or disappear without notice.
• Odds cover NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL only, from the bookmaker(s) ESPN lists for each game (often a single provider). Each game is one ESPN request, so maxGames is capped at 20; pass team for a single game. No historical line archive.
• Injuries cover NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA. ESPN publishes no injury feed for soccer or college basketball, and its college football feed held only three reports dated 2020-2022 when we checked on 2026-09-14, so college football injuries are not offered.
• Soccer team schedules need ESPN's numeric team id (Arsenal is 359); take it from get_standings. Abbreviations are rejected by ESPN.
• News returns headlines, summaries, tags and links, not full article text. ESPN serves at most 50 articles.
• Not included: play-by-play, box scores, player season stats and game logs, rankings, search, and leagues not listed above.
• A league and tool combination that is not listed is refused rather than guessed.

Support

Found a wrong number or a league you need? Open an issue in the Issues tab of this Actor with the tool name, the arguments and what you expected.