ESPN API: Free Sports Data for Scores, Stats & News

The ESPN API refers to a collection of undocumented endpoints that developers have discovered by reverse-engineering ESPN's web and mobile applications. While ESPN doesn't offer an official public API, these hidden endpoints provide free access to a wealth of sports data:

• Real-time Scores: Live scoreboards across all major sports
• Team & Player Stats: Comprehensive statistics and performance data
• News & Headlines: Latest sports news articles
• Standings & Rankings: League standings and power rankings
• Game Summaries: Play-by-play data, box scores, and game details
• Schedules: Upcoming games and event calendars

ESPN's hidden API uses several base domains, each serving different types of data:

The ESPN API covers a wide range of sports and leagues. Here are the most commonly used:

Most endpoints follow a consistent pattern: /apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/{endpoint}

Common Query Parameters

The summary endpoint returns everything ESPN has on one game: box score, play-by-play, win probability, betting lines, injuries and news. It is the ESPN endpoint developers search for most, and it has the least documentation.

https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/summary?event={eventId}
https://site.web.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/summary?event={eventId}

Both hosts returned the same JSON for the same game in our tests. Pick either one.

Where the event ID comes from

Every scoreboard response has an events array, and each event has an id. That id is your event value. For example, basketball/nba/scoreboard?dates=20250605 returns Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals (Pacers at Thunder) with id 401766122, so the summary URL is basketball/nba/summary?event=401766122. A missing or wrong ID returns HTTP 400.

What the summary response contains

Other sports use the same path with their own sport and league. Football responses add drives and scoringPlays. Soccer responses add keyEvents (a match timeline), commentary and rosters. A 2026 World Cup match looks like soccer/fifa.world/summary?event=760506 (Portugal vs Spain).

ESPN publishes a win probability for every play, and there are two ways to get it. Use the summary endpoint unless you have a reason not to.

From the summary endpoint

The winprobability array has one row per play:

{"homeWinPercentage": 0.665, "tiePercentage": 0.0, "playId": "4017661224"}

Values are fractions, not percents. The away side's chance is 1 - homeWinPercentage - tiePercentage. To see which play moved the number, match playId to the id of an entry in plays:

import requests

event_id = '401766122'  # 2025 NBA Finals, Game 1
url = f'https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/summary?event={event_id}'
data = requests.get(url).json()

plays = {p['id']: p for p in data['plays']}
for row in data['winprobability'][-5:]:
    play = plays.get(row['playId'], {})
    clock = play.get('clock', {}).get('displayValue', '')
    print(f"{row['homeWinPercentage']:.1%}  Q{play.get('period', {}).get('number')} {clock}  {play.get('text', '')}")

From the core API

https://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/basketball/leagues/nba/events/{eventId}/competitions/{eventId}/probabilities

For NBA games the competition ID is the same as the event ID. This version is paginated (?limit= and ?page=) and each item is a $ref link, so every play costs one more request. The records do carry extra fields: awayWinPercentage, spreadCoverProbHome and totalOverProb. The spread and total fields were all 0 in our test, so the summary array gives you the same useful numbers in one call.

Every URL below returned HTTP 200 when we tested it. With no dates parameter you get today's games, or the current week for football.

Cricket is the odd one out. It takes a numeric league ID in place of a slug: cricket/8048/scoreboard returned a match, while cricket/scoreboard returned 404.

Date filters

Need a range? Request it month by month and filter the dates yourself.

Here are practical examples for fetching data from the ESPN API:

Get NFL Scores

// Fetch today's NFL scores
fetch('https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/scoreboard')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => {
    data.events.forEach(game => {
      console.log(game.name, game.status.type.description);
    });
  });

import requests

# Fetch today's NFL scores
url = 'https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/scoreboard'
response = requests.get(url)
data = response.json()

for game in data['events']:
    print(game['name'], game['status']['type']['description'])

# Fetch today's NFL scores
curl 'https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/scoreboard'

Get NBA Game Summary

// Fetch detailed game data (replace eventId with actual game ID)
const eventId = '401584793';
const url = `https://site.web.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/summary?event=${eventId}`;

fetch(url)
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => {
    console.log('Boxscore:', data.boxscore);
    console.log('Play-by-play:', data.plays);
  });

import requests

# Fetch detailed game data
event_id = '401584793'
url = f'https://site.web.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/summary?event={event_id}'

response = requests.get(url)
data = response.json()

print('Boxscore:', data.get('boxscore'))
print('Play-by-play:', data.get('plays'))

Get Scores for Specific Date

// Fetch MLB scores for a specific date
const date = '20251001'; // YYYYMMDD format
fetch(`https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/mlb/scoreboard?dates=${date}`)
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => console.log(data));

403 Forbidden

ESPN serves these endpoints through a CDN that blocks some scripted traffic. In our tests, a script that sent a copied Chrome User-Agent header got 403 on every request. The same URLs returned 200 with the default headers of curl, Python requests and Node fetch. If your script sets a browser User-Agent, delete that header first.

If the 403 continues after that, slow down and cache what you fetch. ESPN publishes no rate limit, so there is no safe number to aim for.

400 Bad Request

• No valid event ID: summary needs ?event= with an id from a scoreboard response
• A date range: ?dates=20250601-20250630 fails. Use one day or one month

200 with an empty events array

That means no games on that date, not a broken endpoint. Try a date you know had games.

• No Official Documentation: These endpoints are undocumented and discovered through reverse engineering
• No Stability Guarantee: ESPN can modify or remove endpoints at any time without notice
• Unknown Rate Limits: There's no published information about rate limiting or usage quotas
• No Support: ESPN does not provide developer support for these endpoints
• Terms of Service: Heavy automated usage may violate ESPN's terms of service

These community-maintained resources provide additional documentation and tools for working with the ESPN API: