U.S. Sports Scheduling Data at a League level

Question

I am looking for a database or API or something to poll from that will give me current and future (a bonus would be past as well) data for Major League sports (Basketball, Hockey, Football, Baseball) and the schedules thereof. Minor leagues would also be awesome as well.

Overall I have yet to find a legitimate source for this data, that either doesn't cost thousands of dollars a year to licence or is even remotely valid data. I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction.

Ideally I'd like to find some scores as well, but that's moot in comparison to what I need overall, which is

• team vs team names,
• schedules in one timezone or at least
• knowledge of what timezone the schedule implies for the time of the game vs location thereof.
• Knowing if its a home game for one team or the other is also fantastic.

But overall what I want to know is what teams playing when. The rest is bonus nice to have stuff.

Answer 1

iCalender format files can be used to store and share open data. You can go directly to the leagues and download the calendar files, or use an aggregator site like http://icalshare.com/categories/sports

You can use a tool like python's icalendar to read and parse the files into your own data model. Read more here.

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Interestingly, iCalendar files can be used as a community platform - see this write-up and this space calendar example.