Is there an API for sports scores?
In this era of digitalization, people want to have everything right at the tips of their fingers. From online news to buying and selling goods and many more, the same can be said about sports as well.
There are more than one ways to watch games of their favourite players and teams such as television, online streaming or witness the sport directly from the ground or stadium itself. However, this may not be possible all the time as they may have to miss the game due to different situations such as family functions, hectic work schedule, getting stuck in traffic and so on. In such situations, thanks to the live score websites and mobile apps they can still get the updates of major events that have gone through the entire game.
Well, life is pretty easy right. But have you ever wondered how these websites fetch live data and present it to their audience. You might have wondered about this in your mind sometimes and would want to know the answer, wouldn’t you?
Mostly, the live scores are displayed on the website using football API. API (Application Programming Interface) is an intermediator software that allows two or more applications to interact with each other and share information. These APIs fetch the data through the HTTP request to the web server and is stored in the database and the feeds served via XML and JSON file.
In this article, we will discuss about the sports API, its usage, and different types of sports where an API can be used to generate score data. For example, football API. Also, we will be discussing the different usage of API to generate the players and team stats and real time live score.
With that being said, let’s get started!
What is a Sports API?
A sports API is an application programmed interface developed to tap (collect) the real time data and stats of different types of sports. Its main objective is to fetch the real time information such as live scores, recent results, statistics, head-to-head, upcoming fixtures and many more and present it to the users.
What Type of Websites Uses A Sports API?
Sports API are mostly used by official sports websites to provide live score and other stats such as recent results, upcoming fixtures and many more.
Apart from that, Sports API is also used by betting websites to define different types of betting odds to the betters.
What Types of Sports uses API to Generate Live Scores and Stats?
Generally, outdoor sports such as Football (also known as soccer in USA), cricket, basketball, hockey, rugby (also known as football in USA), etc. use Sports API to generates the live scores, recent results, upcoming matches, and other stats/updates of different teams.
Usages of API in Football
Among the different types of sports played around the world, Football is the most popular one with billions of fans followers. There are many reasons behind the popularity and to keep those intact there are football APIs.
These API will enable the website to display the stats and results of all the football matches played by different teams around the world. Besides, some of the football API will also fetch the past results and even allow the audience to compare head-to-head win/loss records, goal scored / conceded and other key stats of 2 different teams.
What Kinds of Scores You Will Be Able to Display Using Football API?
You will be able to display different scores by using the Football API. The scores will depend on what type of football API that you use on your website. It can be anything from live feeds and updates of the matches from different football leagues to providing detail information a club, player, coach and many more. Besides, there are also football API that provides specific information about the games such as starting lineups formation, play by play heat maps, goal score notifications and many more.
Is there an API that Generates the scores of certain tournaments?
The answer is yes. There are different football API that are created to provide the scores of certain football competitions.
Like for example:
There is a website called Fantasy Premier League. In that website you will find all the goal count, assists count, point counts, player availability, card count, live scores, etc. of the Premier League. This is because the website is created for hosting a fantasy game of premier league club only. Therefore, the players stats and score results for other competitions are not needed.
Same goes for the website that hosts the fantasy league of UEFA Champions League. The website will have a dedicated Champions League API that will be display the player stats and team results / stats of only the clubs that are qualified for the season of UEFA Champions League.
Is there any API that Generates the scores of International Competitions?
Yes, there are different football API that will generate the statistic of the international team and tournament.
Like for example:
Last year, Euro 2020 was held and there was a dedicated API created for display all the stats and real time results of the matches that happened in the competition.
Same can be said for the upcoming Football World Cup 2022 as well. There will be a dedicated World Cup API developed to display all the stats, real time results, highlights and many more.
The Bottom Line
So, we have discussed what a sports API actually is and different types of sports (football, basketball, cricket, rugby, etc.) that use the API to generate live scores, recent results, upcoming matches, and other stats/updates. Then, we discussed about the use of API in football and what are the different types of stats that a Football API can provides. After that, we talked about the dedicated Football API that provides the players stats and live results of the team that certain competitions only. Likewise, we also discussed the API dedicated for international competitions like World Cup and Euro.