🏆 Football-Data.org Competitions Scraper

🚀 Export the global football competition catalog in seconds. Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Champions League, plus standings, fixtures, results, teams, and matches. No setup, no manual ETL.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-23 · 📊 14+ fields per record · 🏆 14 top competitions · 🌍 Worldwide football · ⚽ Competitions, standings, matches, teams

The Football-Data.org Competitions Scraper taps the official football-data.org REST feed and returns clean, structured records for competitions, league standings, full season fixtures, team profiles, and individual matches. The catalog covers the biggest European leagues, continental cups, and international tournaments.

Coverage spans Premier League (PL), La Liga (PD), Bundesliga (BL1), Serie A (SA), Ligue 1 (FL1), UEFA Champions League (CL), Europa League (EL), Championship (ELC), European Championship (EC), FIFA World Cup (WC), Eredivisie (DED), Primeira Liga (PPL), Copa Libertadores (CLI), and Brazilian Série A (BSA). The competitions catalog itself returns 180+ leagues. Free tier covers competition discovery; supply your own Auth Token to unlock standings, matches, teams, and match endpoints plus higher rate limits.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Football data nerds, sports betting researchers, fan-app builders, fantasy platforms, sports newsrooms, club ops	League catalog sync, standings refresh, fixture calendars, team rosters, match-level analysis, ML training sets

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📋 What the Football-Data Scraper does

Five workflows in a single Actor:

• 🏆 Competitions mode. Catalog of every competition football-data.org covers, with code, name, area, plan, and current season.
• 📊 Standings mode. Full league table for a given competition + season, with points, wins, draws, losses, goals for/against, and recent form.
• 📅 Matches mode. All fixtures for a season, with kickoff time, status, score, matchday, and team metadata.
• 🛡️ Team mode. Full team profile by ID, including squad, coach, venue, club colors, and running competitions.
• 🎯 Match mode. Single match drilldown by match ID, including stage, group, venue, status, and full score breakdown.

Every record includes the source competition, area (country), and a scrapedAt timestamp so downstream loads can dedupe cleanly.

💡 Why it matters: managing tokens, rate limits, paginating fixtures, and joining team data across endpoints is tedious. This Actor turns the whole thing into a single run that returns a flat, joinable dataset.

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🎬 Full Demo

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

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
mode	string	"competitions"	One of competitions, standings, matches, team, match.
competitionCode	string	"PL"	14 codes available. PL, PD, BL1, SA, FL1, CL, ELC, EL, EC, WC, DED, PPL, CLI, BSA.
season	string	auto	Season starting year, e.g. "2024" for 2024/25.
teamId	string	none	Required for team mode.
matchId	string	none	Required for match mode.
areas	string	none	Comma-separated area IDs for competitions filter.
authToken	string (secret)	none	Personal token for higher rate limits and restricted tiers.

Example: catalog of every football competition.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "mode": "competitions"
}

Example: Premier League 2024/25 standings with your token.

{
    "maxItems": 20,
    "mode": "standings",
    "competitionCode": "PL",
    "season": "2024",
    "authToken": "your-token"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: the competitions catalog and a few public competitions run on the free tier. Standings, matches, team, and match modes for top-tier competitions often require a free personal token from football-data.org. Add it to authToken to unlock them.

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📊 Output

Records vary by mode but all share core fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema (Competition mode)

Field	Type	Example
🖼️ emblem	string	"https://crests.football-data.org/PL.png"
🆔 id	integer	2021
🏆 name	string	"Premier League"
🔤 code	string	"PL"
🏷️ type	string	"LEAGUE"
🌍 areaName	string	"England"
🏳️ areaCode	string	"ENG"
💳 plan	string	"TIER_ONE"
📅 currentSeasonStart	date	"2024-08-16"
📅 currentSeasonEnd	date	"2025-05-25"
🔢 currentMatchday	integer	28
🗂️ numberOfAvailableSeasons	integer	36
🕒 lastUpdated	ISO 8601	"2024-08-16T08:23:45Z"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-23T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🏆	14+ top competitions. Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Champions League, Europa, Eredivisie, Libertadores, and more.
📊	Five modes. Competitions catalog, standings, season fixtures, team profiles, and single match drill-downs.
🛡️	Rich team data. Squad, coach, venue, club colors, founded year, running competitions per team.
⚡	Fast. 50 competitions in under 15 seconds, full season fixtures in under a minute.
🔓	Free tier works. Competitions catalog runs without any token. Supply yours to unlock the full feed.
🔁	Always fresh. Every run hits the live football-data.org endpoint.
📐	Joinable schema. Every record carries competition code, area, and season for easy SQL joins.

📊 The competition catalog alone unlocks 180+ leagues and cups for fan apps, fantasy platforms, and betting research.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ Football-Data Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	14+ top + 180+ catalog	Live per run	competition, season, area, mode	⚡ 2 min
Commercial sports data feeds	$500+/month	Global, live	Streaming	Many	🐢 Days
Manual scraping of league sites	Free	Per-site	Manual	Per-site	🐌 Weeks
Static CSV exports	Free	Subset, stale	Rarely	None	🕒 Variable

Pick this Actor when you want broad European + UEFA + South American football coverage in a flat schema.

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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 Football-Data.org Competitions Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a mode and a competition code. Add your authToken if you have one.
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

🏆 Fan Apps & Fantasy Auto-sync league tables for fantasy point engines Squad and coach data for player cards Multi-competition fixtures in one place Team crest CDN for app branding	📰 Sports Newsrooms Auto-publish match recaps with score + matchday Standings widgets for league pages Cross-league comparison features Historic season pulls for retrospectives
📊 Betting Research & Modeling Backtest models with historic standings + form Calibrate odds against recent form strings Track home / away splits via match data Cross-competition feature engineering for ML	⚽ Club Operations & Scouting Track opponent form ahead of matchdays Sync rival squad data for scouting reports Compete-against benchmarks across leagues Multi-league talent search with consistent IDs

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🔌 Automating Football-Data 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 on any cron interval. Refresh standings every Monday morning or pull fixtures every Friday afternoon.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Structured football data feeds research, classrooms, civic projects, and fan creativity.

🎓 Research and academia Cross-league competitive-balance studies Academic papers on football economics Reproducible datasets for sports analytics MSc Open-data exercises on European football	🎨 Personal and creative Personal league dashboards Fantasy spreadsheets and trackers Fan podcast research databases Football-themed portfolio dataviz projects
🤝 Non-profit and civic Youth-football organizations linking to top leagues Community sports clubs with league trackers Historical archives of competition results Open journalism on club governance	🧪 Experimentation Train upset-prediction or xG ML models Prototype an agent that picks fantasy lineups Build a "where can I watch?" calendar bot Test data warehouse loaders on football schemas

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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

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a mode (competitions, standings, matches, team, match), set a competition code or ID, and the Actor returns flat records you can load straight into any database.

🔑 Do I need a token?

The competitions catalog and a handful of leagues work without any token. Standings, matches, team, and match modes for top-tier competitions usually require a free personal token from football-data.org. Add it to authToken.

📏 How accurate is the data?

Match results, standings, and team metadata are typically accurate within minutes of the official source. Squad data refreshes on a slower cadence (days to weeks) depending on the competition tier.

🔁 How often is the dataset refreshed?

Every run pulls the latest data. Schedule it as often as your tier permits.

🏆 Which competitions are covered?

14 codes plus the full 180+ catalog. PL, PD, BL1, SA, FL1, CL, ELC, EL, EC, WC, DED, PPL, CLI, BSA.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Hourly during gameweeks, weekly otherwise.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. The football-data.org dataset is publicly available under their terms of service. Crests and trademarks belong to their respective clubs.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Analytics and editorial use are typically fine. Re-distributing logos and crests requires brand approval.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free Apify plan handles small runs (10 records). Paid plans lift the cap and unlock scheduling.

🔁 What happens if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors automatically. Failed runs preserve partial datasets so no progress is lost.

🛬 What if I need player-level stats?

This Actor returns match, team, and league records. For per-player season stats, request a companion scraper via the contact form below.

🆘 What if I need help?

Reach our support team through the Apify platform or the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Football-Data.org Competitions Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get matchday alerts in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe standings 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. Push fresh standings into your product backend, or alert your fantasy league Slack on the final whistle.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more 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 football-data.org, the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A, UEFA, FIFA, or any football competition. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available football data is collected.