ESPN's hidden API endpoints
Latest News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/college-football/news
Latest Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/college-football/scoreboard
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query params:
- calendar: 'blacklist'
- dates: any date in YYYYMMDD
Game Information: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/college-football/summary?event=:gameId
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params:
- gameId: identifier of some game (EX: 400934572 for 2017 Army vs Navy)
Team Information: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/college-football/teams/:team
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params:
- team: some team abbreviation (EX: 'all' for Allegheny, 'gt' for Georgia Tech, 'wisconsin' for Wisconsin)
Rankings: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/college-football/rankings
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/football/nfl/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/mlb/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/mlb/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/mlb/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/mlb/teams/:team
Scores: https://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/baseball/college-baseball/scoreboard
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/hockey/nhl/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/hockey/nhl/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/hockey/nhl/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/hockey/nhl/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/nba/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/wnba/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/wnba/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/wnba/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/wnba/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/womens-college-basketball/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/womens-college-basketball/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/womens-college-basketball/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/womens-college-basketball/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/mens-college-basketball/scoreboard
News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/mens-college-basketball/news
All Teams: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/mens-college-basketball/teams
Specific Team: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/basketball/mens-college-basketball/teams/:team
Scores: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/soccer/:league/scoreboard
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params:
- league: some league abbreviation (EX: 'eng.1' for EPL, 'usa.1' for MLS)
Latest News: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/soccer/:league/news
List of Team Information: http://site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/soccer/:league/teams
Will update with more information as I find more...
I've put about 100 hours into a personal project that I thought was possible with this API, a Raspberry Pi Score Ticker to attach to a TV, such as a second TV or a monitor in a TV room. However, I ran into too many issues with the scoreboard & events calls:
With baseball & hockey, there were too many disappearing data points that would come up in the middle of a game, such as the line score for the top of the 3rd inning would vanish in the bottom of the 6th. While it would reappear, sometimes, the errors & inconsistencies made the use of this API, albeit free for now, too frustrating to actually use on an actual project.
The basic scoreboard call for basketball has some stats, plus 3 leaders, so one API call per run through the scores is sufficient, however, football is another story. Both scoreboard (NFL & college) calls for football has literally zero stats, except the 3 leaders (passing, rushing, & receiving) FOR BOTH TEAMS COMBINED (ugh). Team stats, even basic yardages, are non-existant. So, I tested with calling the events API for each game, and I quickly ran into throttling issues. Two quick consecutive calls, one to the scoreboard and one to an event (game) caused the second to be ignored, time out, and cause a cancellation of any other calls. Python sleeps didn't help. This was strange because manually loading the JSON for 2 calls in a browser can be manually done with just a few second gap, but this couldn't be automated.
In short, I have determined that this API might be OK for the simplest of projects, or maybe downloading a few stats occasionally, but it's not worth any investment of time. It's not worth it for anything involving more than a couple of hundreds of lines of code, such as a super-basic score ticker, and certainly not something involving a nice user interface. I have completed Python Linux command line output for basic scoreboards for the NFL, NBA, and college football & basketball. If there is any interest in me posting a cleaned-up version of this code in another project, please let me know.