🏆 ESPN Standings & Scoreboard Scraper

🚀 Export live NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS standings and scores from ESPN in seconds. No API key required. Just pick a league and download.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 16 fields per record · 🏟️ 153+ teams · 🥇 5 major leagues

Pull real-time standings tables and scoreboard data directly from ESPN's public API. Whether you need win-loss records, winning percentages, point differentials, or current streaks, this Actor delivers clean structured data for every team in the league.

Data comes straight from ESPN's internal API, the same source powering ESPN.com, so you always get the most current standings without scraping HTML. Coverage spans 5 major North American sports leagues: NFL (32 teams), NBA (30 teams), MLB (30 teams), NHL (32 teams), and MLS (29+ teams).

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Sports analysts, fantasy managers, sports journalists, betting researchers, app developers, data scientists	Standings dashboards, fantasy team monitoring, automated articles, predictive modeling, sports apps, team performance analysis

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📋 What the ESPN Standings Scraper does

• 🏈 Five major leagues. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, all in one Actor.
• 📊 Standings mode. Wins, losses, ties, win pct, games back, points for/against, streak.
• 🆚 Scoreboard mode. Real-time game scores, status, home/away teams, venue.
• 📅 Historical seasons. Query any past season by year (e.g. 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).
• ⚡ Under 10 seconds. Pure API, no browser, no HTML parsing.
• 🛑 Clean free tier. 10-record preview for free users.

💡 Why it matters: ESPN's standings data is the industry standard reference for North American sports. Instead of manually copying tables or scraping fragile HTML, this Actor gives you clean JSON you can feed directly into spreadsheets, databases, or dashboards.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
sport	select	"NBA"	League. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, or MLS.
dataType	select	"standings"	Either standings or scoreboard.
season	string	""	Season year (e.g. 2024). Empty means current season.
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.

Example: NBA standings, current season.

{
    "sport": "NBA",
    "dataType": "standings",
    "maxItems": 30
}

Example: NFL 2023 standings.

{
    "sport": "NFL",
    "dataType": "standings",
    "season": "2023",
    "maxItems": 32
}

⚠️ Good to Know: free users are limited to 10 items per run. Upgrade to a paid plan to unlock all teams and unlimited historical seasons.

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📊 Output

Each standings record contains 16 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Description
🏀 teamName	string	Full team display name
🔤 abbreviation	string	Team abbreviation (e.g. "CLE")
✅ wins	integer	Total wins
❌ losses	integer	Total losses
🤝 ties	integer | null	Total ties (null for NBA/MLB)
📊 winPct	float	Win percentage (e.g. 0.732)
📏 gamesBack	float	Games behind division leader
🏹 pointsFor	float	Total points/goals scored
🛡️ pointsAgainst	float	Total points/goals allowed
🔥 streak	string	Current streak (e.g. "W3", "L2")
🌐 conference	string	Conference name
🗂️ division	string | null	Division name (null if not applicable)
🏆 sport	string	League identifier
📅 season	string	Season year or "current"
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of scrape
❌ error	string | null	Error message if applicable

📦 Sample record

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🚀	Instant results. Pure API, runs in under 10 seconds.
🌐	Five leagues. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS in one Actor.
📅	Historical seasons. Query any past season by year.
🚫	No auth required. Uses ESPN's public API.
🧱	Clean structured data. All fields typed and normalized.
🔄	Always current. Same data source as ESPN.com itself.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Setup	Maintenance
⭐ ESPN Standings Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	5 leagues, all teams	Live per run	⚡ 2 min	None
Manual ESPN copy-paste	Free	All	Manual	🐢 10+ min	None
Custom HTML scraper	Free	Varies	Real time	⏳ Hours	High, layout changes
Commercial sports APIs	Subscription	Broad	Real time	🗝️ Auth gated	Vendor managed

Pick this Actor when you want zero-setup ESPN standings without maintaining a brittle HTML scraper.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the ESPN Standings Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a sport, dataType, optional season, and maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📊 Sports Analytics Platforms Auto-refreshing standings dashboards Conference and division ranking views Win-pct trend tracking across seasons Streak and momentum indicators	🎮 Fantasy Sports Tools Cross-league team performance monitoring Streak-based draft and trade insights Schedule strength factoring Notification systems on streak changes
📰 Sports Media and Journalism Automated weekly standings articles Newsletter-ready standings snapshots CMS integrations for live tables Auto-generated stat infographics	🎲 Betting Research and Modeling Build historical standings datasets Correlate standings with game outcomes Loop seasons 2018-2024 for ML training Backtest sport-specific predictors

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🔌 Automating ESPN Standings Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor daily, weekly, or on game-day cadences to keep dashboards and databases in sync.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Sports economics studies on win-loss patterns Comparative league competitive-balance research Teaching datasets for intro statistics Reproducible standings archives by year	🎨 Personal and creative Personal sports dashboards Data-driven sports art and infographics Discord bots for fan communities League-tracker side projects
🤝 Non-profit and civic Youth-league benchmarking against pro structures Open-data sports civic projects Community sports archives Educational sports-analytics workshops	🧪 Experimentation Train standings-based prediction models Build LLM-powered sports explainers Prototype game-result classifiers Multi-season simulation environments

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔑 Does this require an ESPN API key?

No. ESPN's standings and scoreboard endpoints are publicly accessible. No API key, no account needed.

🔄 How current is the data?

Data is fetched in real time from ESPN's API on every run. Same data powering ESPN.com.

📅 Can I get historical standings?

Yes. Enter a season year (e.g. "2023", "2022") in the Season Year field to get historical standings.

🏈 Which leagues are supported?

NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS. More leagues (college football, WNBA) may be added in future versions.

🏟️ How many teams per league?

NFL: 32 teams, NBA: 30 teams, MLB: 30 teams, NHL: 32 teams, MLS: 29+ teams.

🆚 What does "scoreboard" mode return?

Today's games with scores, game status, home/away teams, and venue information.

⏰ Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run daily or weekly and save standings to a persistent dataset.

📥 What format is the output?

JSON by default. Download as CSV, Excel, XML, or JSON from the Apify console.

📦 Are free users limited?

Free users receive a 10-item preview. Paid plans unlock the full dataset (30-32 teams per league).

🌐 Can I filter by conference or division?

Not currently. All conferences are returned. Filter locally by the conference field in the output.

🏫 Does it support college sports?

Not in this version. The Actor targets the 5 major professional North American leagues.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Use the Tally form linked below to reach out.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

ESPN Standings Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe standings data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more sports and reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ESPN, The Walt Disney Company, or any sports league mentioned. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available data from ESPN's public API endpoints is collected.