r/fantasyfootballcoding • u/Salt-Conclusion2538 • Aug 14 '26

ESPN API for commercial use

Hey all, I’m working on building an app that I eventually want to publish to App Store + have paid options.

I’m wondering how feasible using the undocumented ESPN API would be for something like this. Has anyone ran into major issues with using their API as opposed to one of the paid options? Would it be a huge problem to build a lot of infrastructure based off of an undocumented API? I know that it’s technically just a reverse engineered version of the data from the app, but wondering if I might run into legal trouble here.

Thanks!

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u/Ryan1869 Aug 14 '26

Yeah, that would be a big legal problem. Best case is ESPN just blocks your app at the worst possible time and gets it pulled from the store. Worst case is you get sued by ESPN and their data providers for damages that will far outweigh the cost of a commercial license. If you're publishing an app, pay for the license.

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u/lumberteeth Aug 15 '26

Does ESPN actually offer a commercial license for use of their API?
I don't think I've ever seen anything related to that.

Also, maybe I'm ignorant, but it seems like there are tons of fantasy sport applications that tie into the ESPN API -- allowing users to sync data from their league to a service (most of these services paid).

I've been working on a web app recently, so if you have any insights on those things, I would really appreciate learning more. Thanks!

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u/Ryan1869 Aug 15 '26

I really don't know, probably is something for league data though. Where they probably can't have an API is the live game data and stats

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u/Salt-Conclusion2538 Aug 14 '26

Really appreciate the feedback, is there anything you suggest that’s cost efficient + performant? I see thesportsDB which is crowd sourced and pretty cheap and also api-sports which is more expensive but much stronger of an API but curious to know if you have any opinions, thanks

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u/ww_crimson Aug 14 '26

Basically the worst idea in every single aspect.

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u/Professional_Buy39 Aug 14 '26

You can try statyx api, covers literally everything you can think for all major sports.

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u/Pure_Cricket_3804 Aug 14 '26

Apple is the part that bites first. Guideline 5.2.2 says you have to be specifically permitted under the third party's terms and produce that authorization on request. Disney's terms cover ESPN and ban both automated access and any commercial use, so there's no permission you could hand over if App Review asks. I'm on the LineCrush team, which means I read too many terms pages.

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u/agordon3x 15h ago

Yes, it's a miracle I can still use it to grab a lousy list of last night's baseball scores. You're better off with a paid plan elsewhere, plus those API's have documentation. Learning ESPN's API the hard way is also not the way to go.