ESPN College Basketball Scraper

ESPN College Basketball Scraper

Scrape college basketball scores, teams, and news from ESPN, up to a million records per run. Every game comes with its score, status, and broadcast info. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

ESPN's public college basketball data is scattered across scoreboards, team pages, and news feeds. This actor reads the public endpoints directly, filtering by date and content type, and returns each match in one fixed schema. It works for today's games, historical dates, team rosters, and breaking news.

Who uses it	What they scrape ESPN for
Sports analysts	Pull daily scoreboards to track game outcomes and conference standings.
Content creators	Gather team rosters and news for pre-game or post-game articles.
Bettors and handicappers	Collect historical scores to feed predictive models.
App developers	Populate a college basketball app with live scores and team data.

What it does

This Actor collects college basketball data from ESPN's scoreboard, teams, and news endpoints and returns each record as a flat row.

• 🏀 Scoreboard mode: fetches games for a specific date, including final scores, game status, and broadcast details.
• 📋 Teams mode: returns college team rosters, records, and basic team information.
• 📰 News mode: collects the latest college basketball headlines and article summaries from ESPN.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with ESPN data

📊 Build a historical game database.

A data engineer runs the scoreboard endpoint daily for past seasons to compile a complete college basketball results archive.

📝 Automate pre-game content.

A sports blogger pulls team rosters and news each morning to draft matchup previews with current player and story data.

📈 Feed a betting model.

A quantitative analyst collects daily scores and team records to update a model that predicts point spreads and totals.

📱 Power a live scores app.

A developer schedules the scoreboard endpoint every few minutes to display real-time college basketball scores in a mobile app.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key required	Reads ESPN's public feeds directly, no registration or OAuth.
Date filtering	Pull scoreboards for today or any historical date you specify.
Fixed flat schema	Every game, team, or news item arrives in a predictable row format.
High volume	Paid users can collect up to 1,000,000 records in a single run.

How it compares

This actor focuses on college basketball data from ESPN, while the competitors below scrape a wider range of sports or serve data through an MCP interface.

Feature	ParseForge	ESPN MCP Server	ESPN Sports Scraper	ESPN Sports Scraper - Scores, Odds, Stats & Standings
College basketball focus	Yes, dedicated to college basketball endpoints	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed
Scoreboard by date	Yes, with YYYYMMDD date filter	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed
Team rosters	Yes	Not listed	Yes	Yes
News headlines	Yes	Yes	Not listed	Yes
No API key required	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Yes
Up to 1,000,000 records per run	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed

Configure the run

Drive the Actor by selecting an endpoint and an optional date, and the max items limit controls how many records reach your dataset. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "endpoint": "scoreboard",
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "endpoint": "scoreboard",
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.0085 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.85
1,000 results	$8.50
10,000 results	$85.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the ESPN College Basketball Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to ESPN through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/espn-college-basketball-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results from the scoreboard?

Check that the date you entered is in YYYYMMDD format and that games occurred on that date. During the off-season, many dates will return an empty scoreboard.

The actor returns fewer records than my max items setting.

The max items setting is an upper limit. The actor stops when it has read all available data from the endpoint, which may be fewer records than the limit you set.

I got an error or timeout.

ESPN's public feeds may occasionally be slow or unreachable. Retry the run after a few minutes. If the problem persists, reduce the max items value to shorten the run duration.

The data looks different from what I see on the ESPN website.

The actor returns structured data from ESPN's underlying feeds, which may not include every visual element or formatting you see on the rendered page.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What college basketball data can I scrape?	You can scrape game scores and statuses from the scoreboard, team rosters and records from the teams endpoint, and headlines and summaries from the news endpoint.
Can I get historical scores, not today's games?	Yes. Use the optional date filter in YYYYMMDD format to pull the scoreboard for any past date.
Does this cover men's and women's college basketball?	The actor reads whatever college basketball data ESPN publishes on its public endpoints, which typically includes both men's and women's games.
How many records can I get in one run?	Free users are limited to 10 records as a preview. Paid Apify users can set the max items limit up to 1,000,000.
Do I need an ESPN API key or account?	No. This actor reads the same public feeds your browser sees, so no login or API registration is required.
What format does the output come in?	You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify run console.
Can I run this on a schedule?	Yes. Use Apify's scheduler to run the actor every few minutes or once a day to keep your dataset current.
Does it scrape play-by-play or box score details?	The actor returns the top-level game record from the scoreboard endpoint. Detailed play-by-play or box score breakdowns are not included in the current schema.
What happens if I leave the date field empty?	When the date field is empty, the scoreboard endpoint defaults to today's games.
Can I filter by a specific team or conference?	The input schema does not include a team or conference filter. You can pull all teams or all scoreboard games and filter the results after export.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ESPN, Inc. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.