# ESPN Sports News Scraper - Headlines & Stories by League (`ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper`) Actor

$0.5/1K 🔥 Fast ESPN news scraper! Sports headlines & stories by league — title, byline, image & link. No key. JSON, CSV, Excel or API in seconds. Pull the news for aggregation, fan apps & media monitoring ⚡

- **URL**: https://apify.com/ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ninhothedev](https://apify.com/ninhothedev) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Developer tools, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $0.50 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## ESPN Sports News Scraper 🏈🏀⚽

Scrape the **latest sports news from ESPN** — headlines, full story descriptions, bylines, images, categories and article URLs — for any league, with **no API key** and **no login**. Fast, cheap and datacenter-friendly (it reads ESPN's public site API, so no expensive residential proxies are needed).

> Pricing: pay-per-result at roughly **$0.5 per 1,000 articles** — one of the cheapest sports-news feeds on Apify.

### What it does

Given a list of leagues, this actor fetches ESPN's news feed for each one and returns clean, structured JSON — one dataset item per article. Perfect for building sports news aggregators, fan apps, dashboards or media-monitoring pipelines.

### Features

- ⚡ **Fast & cheap** — hits ESPN's hidden JSON site API directly, no browser, no key.
- 🌍 **Any league** — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and dozens of soccer competitions worldwide.
- 🧾 **Rich data** — headline, description, byline, published/last-modified timestamps, article type, URL, lead image + caption, and categories.
- 🕓 **Normalised timestamps** — all dates converted to ISO-8601 (UTC).
- 🧱 **Structured & nullable** — every field is present and safe to consume; missing values are `null` instead of crashing your pipeline.
- 🔁 **Global cap** — control cost with `maxItems`.

### Input

| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|-------|------|---------|-------------|
| `mode` | select | `news` | Scraping mode. `news` fetches the latest articles per league. |
| `leagues` | array | `["football/nfl","basketball/nba","soccer/eng.1"]` | ESPN `sport/league` paths to scrape. |
| `limit` | integer | `50` | Articles requested per league (max 100). |
| `maxItems` | integer | `200` | Global cap on total articles pushed (max 2000). |

#### Example league paths

| Sport | League path |
|-------|-------------|
| NFL (American football) | `football/nfl` |
| NBA (basketball) | `basketball/nba` |
| MLB (baseball) | `baseball/mlb` |
| NHL (hockey) | `hockey/nhl` |
| Premier League (soccer) | `soccer/eng.1` |
| La Liga (soccer) | `soccer/esp.1` |
| UEFA Champions League | `soccer/uefa.champions` |

#### Example input

```json
{
    "mode": "news",
    "leagues": ["football/nfl", "basketball/nba", "soccer/eng.1"],
    "limit": 50,
    "maxItems": 200
}
```

### Output

Each dataset item looks like this:

```json
{
    "league": "football/nfl",
    "headline": "Packers, DT Devonte Wyatt reach 3-year, $57M extension",
    "description": "The Packers and defensive lineman Devonte Wyatt have agreed to terms...",
    "byline": "Rob Demovsky",
    "published": "2026-07-20T20:46:34+00:00",
    "last_modified": "2026-07-20T20:46:34+00:00",
    "type": "HeadlineNews",
    "url": "https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49411888/packers-dl-devonte-wyatt-reach-3-year-57m-extension",
    "image": "https://a.espncdn.com/photo/2025/0914/r1545457_1296x729_16-9.jpg",
    "image_caption": "Devonte Wyatt",
    "categories": ["news", "NFL", "Green Bay Packers"],
    "source": "espn",
    "scraped_at": "2026-07-20T21:00:00+00:00"
}
```

### Use cases

- **Sports news aggregation** — build a multi-league news wall updated on a schedule.
- **Fan apps** — power push notifications and feeds for a specific team or league.
- **Media monitoring** — track coverage, bylines and topics across sports.
- **Content & research** — feed headlines into summarisers, newsletters or LLM pipelines.

### Related actors

- [ESPN Scores Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/espn-scores-scraper) — live & historical scores.
- [ESPN Teams Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/espn-teams-scraper) — team rosters & metadata.
- [Google News Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/google-news-scraper) — general news search.
- [Sports Scraper](https://apify.com/ninhothedev/sports-scraper) — broader sports data.

### FAQ

**Do I need an ESPN API key?** No. This actor uses ESPN's public site API.

**Which proxy should I use?** None required — it is datacenter-friendly. You can run it without proxies.

**How much does it cost?** Roughly **$0.5 per 1,000 articles** plus minimal compute.

***

**Keywords:** espn scraper, sports news scraper, nfl news api, nba news, mlb news, nhl news, soccer news scraper, premier league news, sports headlines, sports news aggregator, espn api, no api key, fan app data, sports media monitoring, football news scraper.

*Disclaimer: This actor collects publicly available data. Respect ESPN's terms of use and only use scraped data lawfully.*

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

Scraping mode. Currently 'news' fetches the latest sports news articles for each configured league.

## `leagues` (type: `array`):

List of ESPN 'sport/league' paths to fetch news for. Examples: 'football/nfl', 'basketball/nba', 'baseball/mlb', 'hockey/nhl', 'soccer/eng.1' (Premier League), 'soccer/esp.1' (La Liga).

## `limit` (type: `integer`):

How many news articles to request per league (ESPN 'limit' parameter). Max 100.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Global cap on the total number of articles pushed to the dataset across all leagues. Max 2000.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "news",
  "leagues": [
    "football/nfl",
    "basketball/nba",
    "soccer/eng.1"
  ],
  "limit": 50,
  "maxItems": 200
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "leagues": [
        "football/nfl",
        "basketball/nba",
        "soccer/eng.1"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "leagues": [
        "football/nfl",
        "basketball/nba",
        "soccer/eng.1",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "leagues": [
    "football/nfl",
    "basketball/nba",
    "soccer/eng.1"
  ]
}' |
apify call ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=ninhothedev/espn-news-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/VbAVFtNDXH0ewVzHk/builds/ERIKBvETnOWxdaT17/openapi.json