
ESPN Developer Center - duck
http://developer.espn.com/
======
aed
Despite the restrictions, I actually thought this would be cool. Maybe I can
cook something up something useful for myself and my friends?

However... NO SCORE DATA in the free API?! That's the only useful information.
Just limit free API usage so I can at least toy with it without having to
completely sell my soul.

So basically, all I can do through the public API is pull news headlines.
Without paying ESPN, all I can build is a free app (no ads either!) and use it
to add headlines to direct traffic to your site. There is no incentive for any
developer to use this.

Here's a hint ESPN: you already have free "Headlines API." They're called RSS
feeds.

<http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?page=rssinfo>

There, every headline you could want from ESPN.

Oh, you want something more specific? Here, I just created my own feed for LSU
Baseball: <http://search.espn.go.com/rss/lsu-baseball/>

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neilkod
CBSSports.com <http://developer.cbssports.com/> launched a similar product a
few months back - it seems to be going well and offers more data than ESPN
does, including fantasy data. My initial reaction is that ESPN hastily cooked
this up as a response to what CBS did.

Disclaimer, I work for CBS Interactive, the parent company of CBS Sports.

~~~
xrd
The TOS is horrible.

"Your Application must be designed to permit CBSi to comply with it's Privacy
Policy, which may be updated by CBSi from time to time without notice to you.
"

Pretty much everything in the TOS is some variant of "you must comply with
this" and "we are not responsible for notifying you when we change it." This
seems like a raw deal to me.

Updating for bugs is hard enough. But, this API forces developers to comply
with UI guidelines (which are impossible to even write tests for) without
anything back.

The API even requires that all financial transactions go through CBSi. Wow.

~~~
xrd
Apple and other app stores have gotten a lot of shit for changing requirements
of their app stores, and rightly so. But, they started with compelling and
clear offerings of the opportunity. The TOS of this API look so terrible up
front I would not consider using it as a small developer. If your bosses at
CSBi want to attract these types of people, I would recommend coming up with a
tiered approach. ESPN does this better in this case.

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jefe78
I checked out their FAQ. Holy restrictions Batman. I've been wanting to do
something with score data for awhile but with this many restrictions, why
bother? I'll just crawl the data from other sources. Good effort ESPN...

~~~
a-priori
I quote from <http://developer.espn.com/terms>:

    
    
      The following default rules apply to all Apps:
    
      - Branding. All Apps must include an approved ESPN trademark, logo or other 
        intellectual property (each, an "ESPN Mark").
    
      - Advertising. No advertising or sponsorship of any kind may appear on or be
        associated with any App (unless included in the Content made available by
        ESPN).
    
      - No Charge. All Apps must be offered free of charge to download or 
        otherwise access and may not contain any in-App purchase features.
    
      If you are interested in creating a for-profit App, please
      contact us at apipartneropps@espn.com to discuss a 
      potential partnership opportunity. All for-profit Apps 
      must be pre-approved in writing by ESPN (such approval to 
      be granted or withheld in ESPN’s sole discretion). To the
      extent any for-profit Apps are approved in writing by ESPN
      (in its sole discretion), you will be solely responsible 
      for any and all taxes due in connection with the 
      distribution of such App in any territory.
    

Kind of limits the use cases...

~~~
paulingalls
Word on the street is that ESPN has a tendency to listen to an idea, not make
the deal, and build it themselves instead. So even going the partnership route
is risky...

------
hospadam
Reading their Terms of Service... Section 3...

"Branding. All Apps must include an approved ESPN trademark, logo or other
intellectual property (each, an "ESPN Mark"). Advertising. No advertising or
sponsorship of any kind may appear on or be associated with any App (unless
included in the Content made available by ESPN). No Charge. All Apps must be
offered free of charge to download or otherwise access and may not contain any
in-App purchase features."

Correct me if I'm wrong - but they've made it impossible to monetize my
effort, correct? I don't see how this will go anywhere if that is the case. It
seems like they just want developers to build extra ESPN apps for them, and
then give them all away for free. Ugh.

~~~
apaprocki
They explain how to contact them if you'd like to sell an app. The idea is
that they do not want you earning money from their data without them getting a
cut. Similar to how Apple does not allow you to use their distribution channel
without taking a cut.

~~~
hospadam
Apple's solution is _much_ more clear, however. Before you ever develop an
app, you know to expect a 70/30 cut. If ESPN provided those details upfront,
I'd be much happier. As it stands, seems like quite a risk to take.

------
TheFuture
Too bad ESPN half-assed this. The pro sports industry is so perfect for doing
awesome data-based products. All that data that drives all the on-screen
stats/replays/camera angles during a TV broadcast... you could just build
awesome interfaces around that. Stuff that would greatly enhance entertainment
for sports nuts and casual fans.

The data is there. The tech is here. It's the lawyers holding this back. And
the CEOs who think they'll still be able to rake in huge profits from selling
TV rights 5 years from now.

ESPN, you know cableTV is what made you, you should be smart enough to realize
that cableTV has started its decline.

Would love to see ESPN/Disney/ABC partner with Apple to build a real
interactive TV platform.

~~~
bgramer
"Would love to see ESPN/Disney/ABC partner with Apple to build a real
interactive TV platform."

With Iger being on the Apple board of directors and recently purchasing a
chunk of AAPL stock for himself, it's quite possible that he'll do whatever he
can to help Apple get access to ESPN/Disney/ABC content.

Probably not going to happen but to entertain a wild speculative guess, he
could finesse an AAPL buyout of Disney/ESPN/ABC too if the partnership is
successful from their business viewpoints.

~~~
TheFuture
There is an incredible opportunity for Dis/ESPN/ABC to partner with Apple.
They have amazing content. That kind of content deal with a new AppleTV is the
kind of thing that would finally fundamentally change the whole TV platform, I
think at a level that your normal consumer would understand and want.

Lots of family-friendly products too, which is something that is always key
for both companies.

The time is now. Consumers are increasingly not seeing the value in cable TV
any more, where is that $100+/month going to go? Apple, Amazon, Netflix? Apple
has the closest thing to a real TV app platform, and lots of developers behind
it too. The content is the missing piece.

Possibly an indicator of how this will go: watch what the newspaper/mag/book
publishers do with a new retina iPad. Do they finally embrace? Do they stop
putting out glorified PDFs of their print products and calling them digital
magazines? Was Apple able to partner with anyone for the iPad3 launch? 5 years
from now it's going to be an expensive luxury to get a printed newspaper or
magazine delivered to your house. Everyone is ready for this EXCEPT the
content producers!

------
methoddk
Good job ESPN. I was excited about this until I registered and realized I
could only use headline data. This thing is completely useless without giving
everyone access to at least two more data streams. (No scores?!) FAIL.

Nice try though.

------
brianbreslin
I really wish they shared score data, as thats most relevant to me. headline
data only drives more traffic to them. You apparently have to be a premium
partner to get the "good" data. <http://developer.espn.com/docs>

~~~
kingkilr
Yeah, this is really unfortunate. I run a game thread generator for the NBA
subreddit (essentially just builds a nice pre-game data table for a user to
create a thread), I guess it's going to stick with insane scraping for now:
<https://github.com/alex/nba-gamethread>

~~~
xpose2000
Very cool Alex. I was actually seriously considering advertising in the /r/NBA
reddit. It seems like it has a loyal following of well informed fans. Just
what I love! :)

The only problem is that I'm not sure how many play fantasy basketball.

~~~
kingkilr
I don't play fantasy basketball myself, but from reading the comments a lot of
the other commenters do.

------
dtennant
ESPN Exec: Hey, we should have one of those API things like Facebook does.
Just make sure we don't give away any of our data. Developer: Sigh. Ok.

~~~
balloot
That's about right. Without teams/scores/standings an ESPN API is useless.
Fail.

------
benrpeters
Congrats ESPN. You're going to get a lot of boring derivatives of what you
already have. Meanwhile, developers interested in making money will build
right around you. There has been staggeringly little innovation in products
for sports fans. ESPN is ensuring that "the Worldwide Leader" doesn't appear
anywhere on the next great product.

------
eggbrain
I'm hoping the data available at the "premium partner" level will come down to
the basic users as time goes on, and it's just to make sure nothing is
overwhelmed the first week or so.

For those curious, the API limits for basic users:

>1 Calls per second

>2,500 Calls per day

~~~
jherdman
Don't bet on it. A lot of sports data is highly encumbered by copyright.

~~~
TheFuture
You sure? Facts can't be copyrighted, I think sports scores are considered
facts.

~~~
dansingerman
Unfortunately, some people think facts can be copyrighted: see
[http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news/news/football-
dataco...](http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news/news/football-dataco-
statement-010312.html)

~~~
dstainer
I'm sure like a lot of other things it's open to a countries laws and
interpretation. According Corynne McSherry, EFF's Intellectual Property
Director, "It's a fundamental principle of copyright law that facts are not
copyrightable" State side something like this should be ok.

However, it doesn't sound like the same protection is afforded in the UK with
regards to the English and Scottish Premier Leagues based on the link you
provided.

Source: [https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-protection-
time-...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-protection-time-zone-
database)

------
moxiemk1
A lot of people seem to be surprised about the ToS for this.

It sounds to me to be clearly a tool for _fans_ , not "Entepreneurs". I know
_tons_ of people who would love to analyze sports data for enjoyment, not
profit. Since the data is so hard to get access to anyway, this API is a way
to let those who are interested play around with things without being a
potential competitor. ESPN wins, fans win. "Sort of like Zynga for sports-
focused Foursquare groups" gets no dice, apparently.

------
vsprabhakara1
For Fanvibe (YC S'10) we looked at a variety of sports stats providers,
including TSN, Stats, and SportsDirect (who we used). These are the guys that
license all the structured data to ESPN and others. No matter who you work
with, its pretty painful to use this data and their schemas. And they all make
you sign paying contracts before you can play with the data.

We used services like Superfeedr to grab a variety of RSS feeds, including
ESPN's, to grab headlines.

ESPN, CBS Sports, the Yahoo Fantasy Football API are all middlemen when it
comes to sports. The only thing they own is original video content (talking
heads, not highlights) and their headlines & articles. Don't look to them for
the solution. Its a big step forward for an organization like ESPN to do this,
but its going to be much slower than the speed of tech-focused companies that
are the usual on HN.

From my experience, better to build around ESPN and others than to try to work
with them to push innovation forward.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Fanvibe, and also used to work at ESPN.

------
damoncali
Please don't call me a nerd.

------
robomartin

      if(ESPN_API.CommercialApplications == NOT_ALLOWED)
      {
        // Work for free to further ESPN brand
        // Can't make any money
        ESPN.GoPoundSand(TRUE);
      }
      else
      {
        // Now they are being realistic
        // We can all make some money
        ESPN.MaybeYouHaveADeal(TRUE);
      }

------
evanjacobs
I've also looked into licensing live sports data from Stats, Inc. and it is
prohibitively expensive (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars to get started). It
seems like the timing is right for a crowdsourced solution for live sports
data that is developer friendly.

~~~
xpose2000
That is a heck of an idea. Live data is definitely out of my price and would
love to help if someone decided to crowdsource live stats. :)

------
twelvedigits
Sports is a huge market that is dangerously behind the access curve. We built
Football Verdict (<http://www.footballverdict.com>) using QuickStats, which
was a reliable NFL score service.

------
dazbradbury
I've always wanted to set up my own fantasy league for football (UK), but the
data is prohibitively expensive. Any move to make stats more available can
only be a good thing, even if it's not exactly perfect (yet).

~~~
noduerme
If you've got time on your hands and you aren't trying to run a live exchange,
it's not that hard to write something that checks into Yahoo! Sports, or the
madduxsports lines or linesmaker.com and scrapes the scores and lines every
few hours.

Or you can try OddsMiner.com, I don't know what their pricing is like but if
it's a small project it sounds like they're flexible.

~~~
dazbradbury
Thanks for the sources, will look into them. OddsMiner could be useful.

My first reaction was to scrape data, but as it's for a fantasy league, which
runs for at least an entire season, there is a good chance the scraper will
break a few times during the season, potentially requiring a re-write. This
isn't ideal if on the week it breaks I don't have time to update the code.

~~~
recroad
I scrape ESPN data for this tool:

<http://recaps.raptorsrepublic.com/>

Generates recaps/box-scores that are used by....yup, ESPN TrueHoop bloggers.

------
xlevus
So how does one become a 'Premium Partner'? Can't seem to find out how.

~~~
jkeel
It's confusing too. The API suggest 4 tiers but then in the FAQ it mentions 3
tiers. The top tier is for ESPN itself?

ESPN: "Hey guys we are cool, right? We opened up our API so that anyone at
ESPN can use. Let's tell the world!!"

------
crikli
So they're asking us to build apps that perpetuate their branding and
marketing efforts without giving us the opportunity to generate revenue.

Pass. Nerds.

------
mvelie
I work for a company that does the sports websites for a lot of college
clients, we provide tons of rss feeds with scores, schedules, news, and all
kinds of other information all for free. ESPN is in this to help themselves
from it, not to get the information out there and help fans.

------
neovive
I was researching a local sports startup about 10 years ago, but the barrier
to entry was so high that it was impossible to even build an MVP without
outside funding. Professional sports is an industry that will be dominated by
the major outlets for many years to come.

------
kapilkaisare
I'd begin taking this seriously the day they started making the Wisden cricket
database available. For quite some time now, I've been looking for the ball-
to-ball accounts of cricket matches since the formation of the ICC.

------
angry-hacker
Does anyone have some alternatives? Someone already mentioned cbs sports. But
some API that have access too football (soccer for Americans) league tables,
match times, scores etc.

------
dottedcircle
its very limiting who wants to access new we want to access scores, league
match schedule etc, this api is very limiting

------
jaxgolfguy
check out <http://xmlteam.com/fod/>. Pay as you. I was considering them except
my site does not generate enough (any) money to justify the cost. Ended up
using YQL to scrape the data from another site.

~~~
recroad
I consult for XMLTeam, and if you call them up, explain what you're trying to
do, they'll be reasonable about it. Good guys, there.

------
DanielN
Please have an espn3 api, please have an espn3 api, please have an espn3
api...

well darn!

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joejohnson
The landing page makes a nerd joke. How cliché.

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e03179
ESPN is one of the greatest brokers of all time.

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exiled
time for a Fantasy Hockey app! Just in time for the end of the season!

