ESPN

ESPN exposes a set of unauthenticated JSON endpoints at site.api.espn.com that cover scores, teams, standings, and news. These endpoints are unofficial and can change without notice.

ingestr supports ESPN as a public source. No authentication is required. The default configuration targets NFL data with sport=football and league=nfl.

URI format

espn://?sport=<sport-slug>&league=<league-slug>

URI parameters:

• sport: ESPN sport slug. Defaults to football.
• league: ESPN league slug. Defaults to nfl.
• dates: Optional scoreboard date or date range, such as 20260910 or 20260910-20260912.
• season: Optional season year passed to scoreboard and standings requests.
• limit: Optional request limit for scoreboard and news. Defaults to 100.
• base_url: Overrides the ESPN API base URL. Defaults to https://site.api.espn.com.

Example

Load NFL scoreboard events into DuckDB:

ingestr ingest \
  --source-uri 'espn://?sport=football&league=nfl&dates=20260910-20260912' \
  --source-table 'scoreboard' \
  --dest-uri 'duckdb:///espn.duckdb' \
  --dest-table 'sports.scoreboard'

Load NBA teams:

ingestr ingest \
  --source-uri 'espn://?sport=basketball&league=nba' \
  --source-table 'teams' \
  --dest-uri 'duckdb:///espn.duckdb' \
  --dest-table 'sports.nba_teams'

Tables

Table	PK	Inc Key	Default Strategy	Details
teams	id	-	replace	Loads teams from /apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/teams. Roster snapshot.
scoreboard	id	-	merge	Loads scoreboard events from /apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/scoreboard. Use merge to accumulate events across interval runs.
competitors	event_id, competition_id, team_id	-	merge	Fans out each scoreboard event into one row per competitor/team.
standings	league_id, group_id, season, team_id	-	replace	Loads standings from /apis/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/standings. Latest snapshot for the given season.
news	id	-	merge	Loads latest league news articles from /apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/news. Accumulates over runs.

Use these as the --source-table parameter in the ingestr ingest command. Pass --incremental-strategy to override the default for any table.