Compliance & licensing

sportapi data comes from licensed feeds, not scraping. That means a stable contract, but it also means usage restrictions for certain data types — particularly betting and player tracking.

Data sources

Our upstream sources include the official league feeds (where licensed), Sportradar, Genius Sports, IMG, Second Spectrum (player tracking), and an internal news ingestion pipeline aggregating 5,000+ licensed publishers.

Licensing tiers

Three tiers govern what data you can consume and how you can use it:

Standard — scores, stats, schedules, news. Permitted for editorial, fantasy, analytics, and consumer apps.
Betting — odds, props, settlement-grade data. Requires compliance review.
Tracking — Next Gen Stats / Second Spectrum data. Enterprise-only with bespoke licensing.

Betting tier requirements

To activate betting tier you'll need to provide:

Jurisdictions of operation
Sportsbook license documentation (or evidence of a B2B-only use case)
Description of how the data will be displayed or used
Acknowledgment of upstream provider restrictions (e.g. no rebroadcast of official data)

⚠️

Using sportapi data for unlicensed bookmaking is a violation of our terms and applicable law. We work with regulated operators only.

Player tracking restrictions

NBA Second Spectrum, NFL Next Gen Stats, and MLB Statcast data carry usage restrictions:

May not be used to create derivative real-time products that compete with the league's own offering
May not be redistributed to third parties without explicit permission
Historical aggregates (season averages) are generally OK; per-game tracking requires review

International data

Soccer leagues have a patchwork of licensing arrangements. Some leagues (EPL, La Liga) have strict redistribution rules; others (lower-division leagues) are more permissive. We'll flag restrictions at the league level during onboarding.