Realtime Sports API
67
AI ReadinessAI-Aware (B)67/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyMediaContent Deliverybearer50 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Get live scores, box scores, play-by-play, win probability, odds, injuries, rosters, and news for NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college, and soccer leagues, and subscribe to updates by webhook.
Use for: Get the live NFL scores right now, Retrieve the box score for last night's Lakers game, Check whether the starting quarterback is listed as out this week, Find all injury changes in the NBA since this morning
Not supported: Does not place bets, stream video, or sell tickets. Use for reading scores, game data, odds, and sports news only.
The Realtime Sports API serves live scores, play-by-play, box scores, schedules, teams, athletes, injuries, news, and betting odds for the NFL, college football, the NBA, men's college basketball, MLB, the NHL, and 23 soccer competitions under one schema. Every resource is addressed by a sport slug and a league slug in the URL path, such as football and nfl, down to individual events, teams, athletes, and seasons. Webhooks with HMAC-SHA256 signed deliveries and a WebSocket token operation push updates instead of polling; the spec notes data is typically 20-30 seconds behind live play.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Realtime Sports API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Realtime Sports API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Frealtimesportsapi.com%2Frealtimesportsapi" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Frealtimesportsapi.com%2Frealtimesportsapi" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Realtime Sports API.
List live events for a league, optionally attaching current betting odds with includeOdds
Read an event's box score, play-by-play, penalty plays, and win probability by eventId
Track current odds and odds history for a single event
Check injury reports and normalized player availability by team, plus a feed of availability changes since a timestamp
Search athletes by name and pull a season game log filtered by week and seasonType
Pull a season schedule by week, conference and division groups, and NCAA tournament games by round and region
Register webhooks for chosen events, rotate their signing secret, send a test delivery, and list failed deliveries
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Realtime Sports API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Sports answers from an AI agent through Jentic
A chat assistant asked 'what's the score of the Chiefs game?' needs a live lookup, not stale training data. Through Jentic the agent searches for 'live scores for a league', receives the live events operation with its sport and league inputs, and calls it while your self-hosted Jentic One instance injects the bearer key. It can follow up with the box score or win probability for the same eventId.
Call GET /sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/live with sport 'football' and league 'nfl', find the event involving Kansas City, then GET its boxscore by eventId
Fantasy and lineup decisions
Fantasy players and lineup tools care about who is playing. The injury report and normalized player availability operations filter by team and status, the availability history feed returns changes since a timestamp, and an athlete's game log can be pulled per season and week. Team depth charts and game rosters with starters fill in the rest.
Call GET /sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/player-availability/history with sport 'football', league 'nfl', and since set to this morning, then list players whose status changed
Push updates by webhook
Polling scores burns monthly quota. A webhook created with a url and a list of events receives pushed deliveries signed with HMAC-SHA256 in the X-Webhook-Signature header, and the signing secret is returned once at creation and can be revealed or rotated later. A test delivery and a failed-deliveries list help debug the receiver. Webhooks need a paid plan or a direct API key.
POST /webhooks with url 'https://example.com/hooks/scores' and the events to subscribe to, then POST /webhooks/{webhookId}/test to send a test delivery
Odds tracking
Betting content and research tools follow how lines move. The current odds and odds history operations work per eventId, and live and scheduled event lists can carry odds inline with includeOdds. The spec states the data runs about 20-30 seconds behind live play and is not suitable for in-play betting that needs sub-second data.
Call GET /sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/odds/history for sport 'basketball', league 'nba', and the event's eventId, then summarise how the spread moved
Key Endpoints
50 endpoints — the realtime sports api serves live scores, play-by-play, box scores, schedules, teams, athletes, injuries, news, and betting odds for the nfl, college football, the nba, men's college basketball, mlb, the nhl, and 23 soccer competitions under one schema.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/live
List live events
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/boxscore
Get box score
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/plays
Get play-by-play
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/odds
Get current odds
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/injuries
Get injury report
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/seasons/{season}/schedule
Get season schedule
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/athletes/search
Search athletes by name
POST
/webhooks
Create a webhook
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/live
List live events
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/boxscore
Get box score
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/plays
Get play-by-play
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/events/{eventId}/odds
Get current odds
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/injuries
Get injury report
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/seasons/{season}/schedule
Get season schedule
GET
/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/athletes/search
Search athletes by name
POST
/webhooks
Create a webhook
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
R
Realtime Sports API
- AI-Aware (B)67/100
99
Foundational Compliance77
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility45
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability55
Security69
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.2
Show dimension breakdown
99
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A+Signals: 4
96%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
77
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: A-Signals: 4
34%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
99%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
75%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
45
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: DSignals: 4
29%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
100%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
52%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
55
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: CSignals: 1
55%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
69
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: B+Signals: 1
69%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the Realtime Sports API by hand means choosing between the bearer and X-API-Key headers, composing sport and league slugs into every path, and watching meta.rateLimit so you do not hit 429s. Through Jentic you install once, import the Realtime Sports API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
The sport and league slugs sit in the URL path (/sports/{sport}/leagues/{league}/...), so a rule can pin your agent to one league such as nfl, and event, team, and athlete ids narrow it further. You choose the operations it may call, so webhook deletion or signing-secret reveal and rotation are not included unless you add them.
Credential isolation
Your Realtime Sports API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'live NFL scores' or 'injury report for a team', and Jentic returns the matching Realtime Sports operation with its input schema so the agent fills the right sport and league slugs without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Realtime Sports API through Jentic.
What authentication does the Realtime Sports API use?
Per its OpenAPI spec, the Realtime Sports API accepts your API key either as a bearer token in the Authorization header or through the ApiKeyHeader scheme, an apiKey sent in the `X-API-Key` header that is useful behind proxies that strip Authorization. Keys are opaque strings, not JWTs. Through Jentic, the key is stored encrypted by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time, so it never enters the agent's context.
Is there a Realtime Sports API MCP server?
You don't need an MCP server to give your agent the Realtime Sports API. Jentic connects it directly from the API Directory: import it, store your key once, and your agent calls it. Operations are discovered on demand, so the agent loads the score or odds operation it needs rather than the whole surface.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Realtime Sports API?
Yes. For a fantasy football assistant, allow only the GET operations under /sports/football/leagues/nfl/, so the agent can read NFL scores, injuries, and rosters but cannot query other leagues, create or delete webhooks, or reveal a webhook signing secret. Every call it makes is logged.
What are the rate limits for the Realtime Sports API?
The spec's own description sets monthly call quotas per plan: Free 125 per month (1,000 in the first 30 days), Starter 10,000, Growth 25,000, Pro 50,000, and Scale 500,000. Per-second rates also apply, from Free 1/s up to Scale 100/s. When the quota runs out the API returns HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header, and remaining quota appears in meta.rateLimit on most responses.
How fresh is the Realtime Sports API data?
The spec states data is aggregated from public sources and is typically 20-30 seconds behind live play, with no SLA. It is not suitable for in-play betting that needs sub-second data; for faster delivery than polling, use webhooks or the WebSocket token from POST /websocket/auth.
Which leagues does the Realtime Sports API cover?
The spec lists the NFL, college football, the NBA, men's college basketball, MLB, the NHL, and 23 soccer competitions. Sport slugs include football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer, and league slugs include nfl, nba, mlb, nhl, eng.1, and usa.1; GET /sports and the leagues listing return the full set.
How do I get live scores through Jentic?
Install Jentic One with `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh`, import the Realtime Sports API from the API Directory, and store your key. Your agent searches for 'live scores for a league', receives the live events operation with its sport and league inputs, and calls it. To run it on your own infrastructure, install Jentic One from its GitHub repo.
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