@cyanheads/sports-mcp-server

Overview

Live and historical sports data from ESPN, MLB StatsAPI, and TheSportsDB. Look up teams and players, check scores, schedules, and standings across NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and major soccer leagues from any MCP client. Runs as a stdio process or a local Streamable HTTP server.

Tools

Related MCP server: Sports Hub MCP Server

Capability reference

sports_find_team tool

• Free-text query (max 200 characters) with an optional league filter

• Returns team metadata and merged espnId/mlbId/tsdbId cross-references; no_match when no provider finds a team

sports_find_player tool

• Free-text query (max 200 characters); optional sport is advisory and does not filter matches

• Returns player IDs, name, team, position, nationality, birth date, and thumbnail; no_match when TheSportsDB finds no player

sports_get_scores tool

• league required; date (YYYY-MM-DD) defaults to today; optional team_name filters to one team's game

• Returns home/away teams, score, status, period or clock, and UTC start time; no games returns games: [] with a reason

sports_get_schedule tool

• league required; optional team_name, and date_from/date_to (YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive)

• Returns home/away teams and scores, status, UTC start time, venue, and source; team_not_found when the team doesn't resolve in the league

• Paired league-wide bounds are sent upstream; no bounds or one bound keep the provider-default fetch and local filtering. MLB range results preserve provider calendar dates, including games starting the next UTC day

sports_get_standings tool

• league required; optional season (4-digit year) — omit for the current season

• Returns rank, wins, losses, ties, points, winning percentage, division rank, streak, and games behind; an explicit season with no data returns season_not_found

sports_get_team tool

• league and team_name required (fuzzy match on name, abbreviation, or location)

• Returns metadata, active roster, up to 5 completed results, and up to 3 upcoming fixtures; team_not_found when the team doesn't resolve in the league

sports_get_player tool

• player_id accepts a tsdb:-prefixed ID (from sports_find_player) or a raw numeric TheSportsDB ID

• Returns biography, team, position, nationality, birth date, height, weight, and thumbnail; player_not_found when the ID doesn't resolve

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

Sports-specific:

• Three keyless sources — ESPN site API, MLB StatsAPI, and TheSportsDB (free tier key 3) — no required API credentials

• Internal league routing table sends each query to the best source per sport; callers never reference an upstream API directly

• Normalized output types across all sources — NormalizedGame, NormalizedTeam, NormalizedPlayer, NormalizedStanding — with source provenance on every record

• Cross-source team IDs merged onto one canonical record by sports_find_team, deduplicated by display name

• Graceful off-season handling — empty standings return an enrichment notice rather than an error; empty scoreboards return games: [] with a reason string

• Upstream operations use 10-second attempts and a 30-second total retry budget, including body reads and backoff, with up to four attempts for fast transient failures. Composite tools can make several such operations

Agent-friendly output:

• Source provenance on every record — source: 'espn' | 'mlbstats' | 'thesportsdb' — so agents can reason about data authority

• Structured reason field on empty score responses, and an enrichment notice on off-season standings, so agents can explain results without treating them as errors

• Cross-source IDs surfaced by sports_find_team — espnId, mlbId, tsdbId — identify the same team across providers; team-scoped tools resolve team_name independently

• Typed error reasons (no_match, team_not_found, player_not_found, season_not_found) each carrying an actionable recovery hint

• Upstream HTTP errors retain their status and bounded diagnostics; ESPN scoreboard input rejections include date/bounds guidance. Optional-source outages degrade gracefully, while input rejections and cancellation propagate

• Formatted provider fields stay on their authored lines, and full player biographies appear in text fences; structured values remain verbatim. Provider content is data, never instructions

Getting started

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sports": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/sports-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sports": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/sports-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sports": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/sports-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.4.0 or higher (or Node.js v24+).

• No API keys required — ESPN and MLB StatsAPI are fully keyless; TheSportsDB ships with a free public test key (3).

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/sports-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd sports-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to override defaults (all optional)

Configuration

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test       # Vitest test suite
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec

Docker

docker build -t sports-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -p 3010:3010 sports-mcp-server

The Dockerfile builds with Bun, runs the production server under Node, defaults to HTTP transport and stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/sports-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic

• Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage

• Register new tools via the barrel in src/mcp-server/tools/definitions/index.ts

• Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.