LiveScore Live Soccer Score Tracker

Purpose

Track currently-live soccer (football) matches on LiveScore.com — for every match in play right now, return competition, country, home and away teams (name + abbreviation + team ID), current score, half-time score, elapsed-minute string ("34'", "HT", "90+1'"), match phase (1st half / HT / 2nd half / FT / AP), scheduled kickoff time, and the canonical livescore.com match URL. Read-only — never opens or interacts with sportsbook / betting links.

When to Use

• "What soccer games are live right now?" — pure live-only feed.
• Polling-driven score notifications (cache TTL is 10 s — fine for ≥ 15 s polls).
• Building a multi-match live dashboard (Europa League + domestic leagues + lower divisions surface together).
• As a higher-fidelity supplement to the on-screen UI when you also need per-match incidents (goals, cards, subs) via the per-event scoreboard/incidents endpoints.
• Filtering live results to a specific league, country, or team — the response is already grouped by Stages[] (competition).

Workflow

LiveScore's web UI is a thin client over a public JSON API at prod-cdn-mev-api.livescore.com. The endpoint is unauthenticated, no cookies, no CSRF token, no signing, and serves CORS responses keyed to https://www.livescore.com — but the server does not enforce Origin or Referer (we verified 200 OK from browse cloud fetch with neither header). A residential proxy is not required. Lead with the API. The browser path works as a fallback but pays a ~50× cost premium because the live page is JS-rendered (the HTML body served by /en/football/live/ contains no inline score data — the React app hydrates from the same API call after load).

Recommended path — direct API

1. List currently-live soccer matches:

   GET https://prod-cdn-mev-api.livescore.com/v1/api/app/live/soccer/{tzOffsetHours}?countryCode={CC}&locale=en
   

   • tzOffsetHours — integer hour offset from UTC, e.g. -7 (US Pacific), 0 (UTC), 5, +1. Controls the "today" boundary used by the server when deciding which matches belong to the current calendar day for the caller. For a pure live feed (no boundary effect) any value works; pick the user's local offset for safety.
   • countryCode — ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 (e.g. US, GB, DE). Controls TV-channel allowedCountries filtering inside the Media[] array; does not filter which matches appear. Pass the user's country if you care about media broadcast hints, otherwise US is a safe default.
   • locale — language for team/league display strings (en, es, de, ...). Always include — omitting still returns en but the server occasionally returns Snm/Cnm blank without it.

   Returns:

   { "Ts": 1779305661, "Stages": [ { /* competition */ "Events": [ /* matches */ ] } ] }
   

   Ts is the snapshot epoch in seconds. Stages is empty when no soccer match anywhere in the world is currently in play (rare — soccer is essentially 24/7 across the global fixture list; expect ≥ 1 stage during normal hours).

2. Decode each Stage (one per competition appearing in the live feed):

   • Sid — stage id.
   • Snm — display name of the stage (e.g. "Eliteserien", "Final", "Serie B: Promotion: Play-off"). For tournaments mid-flight, Snm may be the round name ("Final", "Semi-finals"); the league/cup display name is Cnm + CompN.
   • Cnm / Csnm — country display name (e.g. "Norway", "Saudi Arabia", "Europa League" for UEFA competitions where Cnm doubles as the competition).
   • Ccd — country slug used in URLs ("saudi-arabia", "norway", "europa-league", "north-macedonia" → note URL uses "macedonia" for this one, see gotchas).
   • Scd — stage slug used in URLs ("eliteserien", "premier-league", "saudi-professional-league").
   • CompId / CompN / CompUrlName — globally-stable competition id, full competition name, and competition URL slug. Prefer these over Sid/Snm when grouping/de-duplicating across iterations.
   • badgeUrl, firstColor — branding hints. Badge full URL: https://lsm-static-prod.livescore.com/medium/{badgeUrl}.

3. Decode each Event (one per live match):

   • Eid — event id (use this for the per-match scoreboard/incidents calls in step 4).
   • T1[0] / T2[0] — home and away team. Fields: ID (team id), Nm (display name), Abr (3-letter abbrev), Img (badge path — full URL: https://lsm-static-prod.livescore.com/medium/{Img}), Fc/Sc (primary/secondary hex color, no #).
   • Tr1 / Tr2 — current score (string-encoded integers — "1", "3"; cast before use).
   • Trh1 / Trh2 — half-time score (snapshot when match was at HT; equals Tr1/Tr2 during 1st half).
   • Tr1OR / Tr2OR — score at end of regulation (90 min). Diverges from Tr1/Tr2 only for matches with extra time / penalties.
   • Eps — elapsed period string. "34'" mid-half, "HT" at half-time, "90+1'" injury time, "FT" full-time, "AP" after penalties. Use this directly for human display.
   • Esid — event status id (integer enum, see "Site-Specific Gotchas"). For the /live/ endpoint expect only 2/3/10/13 (any in-play state). Matches that finish during the response's cache TTL may briefly appear with Esid=6 (FT).
   • Epr — phase: 0 upcoming, 1 in-play, 2 finished. The /live/ endpoint generally only returns Epr=1.
   • Esd — scheduled start packed as decimal YYYYMMDDHHMMSS in UTC (e.g. 20260520120000 = 2026-05-20 12:00:00 UTC). Parse with a regex split or String.match(/^(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})$/).
   • Etm.ATm — actual kickoff timestamp in milliseconds (epoch). Use this for "match has been running for X minutes" calculations; do not rely on Eps for sub-minute precision.
   • Etm.RTm — running-time-since-kickoff in milliseconds (server's count, includes added time but not the HT break).
   • seriesInfo — present on two-legged ties (e.g. Champions League knockout, Serie B promotion play-offs). Fields: totalLegs, currentLeg, aggScoreTeam1, aggScoreTeam2. Surface this when present — agents that only look at Tr1/Tr2 will misreport aggregate context.
   • Shck (boolean) — "score has changed since last snapshot" flag. Useful for polling diffs.
   • Media — broadcast hints. Sub-keys are provider IDs ("112" = TV channels, "29" = audio commentary, "33" = liveactions widget). Each item has allowedCountries / deniedCountries.

4. Per-match deeper detail (optional, when surfacing one specific match):

   GET https://prod-cdn-public-api.livescore.com/v1/api/app/scoreboard/soccer/{Eid}?locale=en
   GET https://prod-cdn-public-api.livescore.com/v1/api/app/incidents/soccer/{Eid}?locale=en
   

   scoreboard returns a single Event object with the same shape as step 3, plus Venue, LuUT (last-updated timestamp), Eact (active-state flags), and Incs-s (summarized incidents — goals only). incidents returns the full event timeline keyed by team number: Incs: { "1": [...home incidents...], "2": [...away incidents...] }. Each incident has Min (minute), Pn (player display name), Pnt (player URL slug), Aid (player id), IT (incident type, see Gotchas), Sor (sort order).

5. Construct the canonical match URL when surfacing a result:

   https://www.livescore.com/en/football/{Ccd}/{Scd}/{slug(T1.Nm)}-vs-{slug(T2.Nm)}/{Eid}/
   

   Where slug(x) is x.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]+/g, '-') (verified against captured URLs — e.g. Freiburg → freiburg, Aston Villa → aston-villa, Al Khaleej → al-khaleej). The {Eid}/{trailing slash} is mandatory — omitting either segment 404s.

Browser fallback

If the API returns 4xx/5xx (we observed no anti-bot blocking during ~5 minutes of testing, but as a contingency):

sid=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --proxies --verified \
  | node -e "let s='';process.stdin.on('data',c=>s+=c).on('end',()=>process.stdout.write(JSON.parse(s).id))")
export BROWSE_SESSION="$sid"

browse open "https://www.livescore.com/en/football/live/" --remote
browse wait load --remote
browse get text --remote

The page is fully JS-rendered. browse snapshot returns refs but the live-match list is in a virtual-scroller — browse get text is the simplest extraction. The DOM exposes per-match elements with class names like Eh/bb/db (auto-generated, may shift between deploys); the text-flow order matches the API's stage → events grouping. Don't waste turns trying to find a stable CSS selector — fall back to regex-splitting the text by stage name. Cost: ~10-30s for the full page render plus extraction parsing, vs. ~0.5s for the API.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Esid enum — integer event-status code. Observed values from production data: 1 = Not Started (NS), 2 = 1st Half (in-play), 3 = 2nd Half (in-play), 6 = Full Time (FT), 10 = Half Time (HT), 13 = After Penalties (AP). The /live/ endpoint only returns Esid ∈ {2, 3, 10, 13} (plus occasionally 6 for matches that finished within the last cache TTL window). Other values likely exist for extra time, postponements, abandonments — not directly observed.
• Epr ≠ Esid — Epr is a coarser 3-value phase (0 upcoming / 1 live / 2 finished). Use Epr when you only need live/finished classification; use Esid for the specific period.
• Tr* fields are strings, not numbers — "Tr1":"1", "Tr2":"3". Cast with parseInt or Number() before arithmetic. Free / 0-0 matches use "0", not the empty string.
• Esd is packed decimal in UTC, not ISO 8601 — 20260520120000 means 2026-05-20T12:00:00Z. Parsing this as a plain integer or naive Date constructor (which interprets as local time) silently shifts kickoff times by the local offset. Use an explicit regex parse to Date.UTC().
• Etm.ATm is milliseconds, Ts is seconds. The top-level snapshot timestamp Ts is in seconds, but inside each event Etm.ATm (actual kickoff) and Etm.RTm (running time) are in milliseconds. Mixing the units in a "match age" calculation produces wildly wrong numbers — always reconcile (Ts * 1000 - Etm.ATm).
• Country-slug ≠ country-name slug for two countries. Cnm="North Macedonia" has Ccd="macedonia" (no "north-" prefix in the URL slug). Cnm="Bosnia and Herzegovina" typically resolves to Ccd="bosnia-herzegovina". Don't rederive the URL slug from the display name — always pull Ccd and Scd directly from the API response.
• Cnm doubles as competition for UEFA tournaments. For Champions League / Europa League / Conference League, Cnm is the competition name ("Europa League") and Snm is the round ("Final", "Quarter-finals"). For domestic leagues, Cnm is the country ("Saudi Arabia", "Italy") and Snm/CompN is the league. If you need a uniform "competition name" field, prefer CompN (always set when defined; falls back to Snm for non-UEFA cup ties without a CompN).
• Detail URL pattern is /en/football/{Ccd}/{Scd}/{slug}/{Eid}/, NOT /en/football/{Scd}/{slug}/{Eid}/. The country segment is mandatory between sport and league. We verified that omitting it (/en/football/europa-league/freiburg-vs-aston-villa/1746767/) returns a 404; the correct URL puts the UEFA "country" in: /en/football/europe/europa-league/freiburg-vs-aston-villa/1746767/. The trailing slash is also mandatory.
• Cache TTL = 10 s (Cache-Control: max-age=10, public). Polling faster than every ~10 s wastes calls — the CDN returns the same X-Cache-Status: HIT body until TTL expires. Hits are also cached per (path, tzOffset, countryCode, locale) tuple — varying tzOffset busts the cache uselessly.
• /live/soccer/0 and /live/soccer/-7 return the same matches. The timezone offset only affects the date-grouping boundary, not the live filter. Vary it only when calling the per-day endpoint (/date/soccer/YYYYMMDD/{tz}).
• Snm may be the value "Final" literally — not "finished", but "the Final round" (e.g. Sid=25365 Snm="Final" Cnm="Europa League" is the actual UEL Final fixture). Don't mistake this for a finished-match flag. Use Esid / Epr / Eps for match status.
• Two-legged tie aggregate score is in seriesInfo, NOT Tr1/Tr2. Tr1/Tr2 is always the score of the current leg only. Surfacing "Catanzaro 3-1 on aggregate" requires checking seriesInfo.aggScoreTeam1/aggScoreTeam2. Absent for single-leg matches.
• browse get text on the live page returns a "Your browser is out of date" warning string in the markup even when the browser is current. It's a noscript-fallback sentence that the React app does not visibly render. Ignore lines matching /browser is.*out of date/ when text-parsing the fallback.
• The legacy domain livescores.com (with trailing s) is referenced in the noscript fallback for older browsers — it is a separate, much sparser product and does not serve the JSON API. Do not redirect there.
• No --proxies or --verified needed for the JSON API. Verified via browse cloud fetch (default proxy-less path) returning statusCode: 200 with full payload, no captcha, no Akamai. The browser fallback may benefit from --verified on aggressive polling, but for one-shot reads a bare session is fine.
• Field Pids maps provider IDs to that provider's match ID. Useful for cross-referencing — e.g. Pids["8"] is the LiveScore canonical id (= Eid), Pids["112"] is the SBTE/sportsbook ID, Pids["33"] is the Stats Perform/Opta ID. Most agents only need Eid.

Expected Output

The API returns the full Stages → Events tree. The recommended downstream shape (one flat record per live match) is:

{
  "snapshot_ts": 1779305661,
  "matches": [
    {
      "event_id": "1746767",
      "competition": {
        "name": "Europa League",
        "round": "Final",
        "country": "Europa League",
        "country_slug": "europa-league",
        "stage_slug": "final",
        "competition_id": "36",
        "badge_url": "https://lsm-static-prod.livescore.com/medium/europa-league-2024.png"
      },
      "home": { "id": "365",  "name": "Freiburg",    "abbr": "SCF", "badge_url": "https://lsm-static-prod.livescore.com/medium/enet/8358.png" },
      "away": { "id": "3863", "name": "Aston Villa", "abbr": "AVL", "badge_url": "https://lsm-static-prod.livescore.com/medium/teambadge/aston-villa-2024.png" },
      "score":            { "home": 0, "away": 0 },
      "half_time_score":  { "home": 0, "away": 0 },
      "regulation_score": { "home": 0, "away": 0 },
      "aggregate_score":  null,
      "period_label": "34'",
      "period_status": "2nd_half",
      "esid": 2,
      "epr": 1,
      "kickoff_utc": "2026-05-20T12:00:00Z",
      "kickoff_ms": 1779305616262,
      "running_time_ms": 1980000,
      "match_url": "https://www.livescore.com/en/football/europa-league/europa-league/freiburg-vs-aston-villa/1746767/",
      "score_changed_since_last_snapshot": false
    },
    {
      "event_id": "1776155",
      "competition": {
        "name": "Serie B",
        "round": "Promotion Play-offs - Semi-finals",
        "country": "Italy",
        "country_slug": "italy",
        "stage_slug": "serie-b-promotion-play-off",
        "competition_id": "110"
      },
      "home": { "id": "11873", "name": "Palermo",   "abbr": "PAL" },
      "away": { "id": "4073",  "name": "Catanzaro", "abbr": "CAT" },
      "score":            { "home": 1, "away": 0 },
      "half_time_score":  { "home": 1, "away": 0 },
      "regulation_score": { "home": 1, "away": 0 },
      "aggregate_score":  { "home": 1, "away": 3, "current_leg": 2, "total_legs": 2 },
      "period_label": "69'",
      "period_status": "2nd_half",
      "esid": 3,
      "epr": 1,
      "kickoff_utc": "2026-05-20T11:00:00Z",
      "match_url": "https://www.livescore.com/en/football/italy/serie-b-promotion-play-off/palermo-vs-catanzaro/1776155/"
    },
    {
      "event_id": "1777644",
      "competition": { "name": "Serie C", "round": "Promotion Play-offs - 4th Round", "country": "Italy", "country_slug": "italy", "stage_slug": "serie-c-promotion-play-off" },
      "home": { "id": "4042", "name": "Catania", "abbr": "CAT" },
      "away": { "id": "4283", "name": "Lecco",   "abbr": "LEC" },
      "score":            { "home": 2, "away": 2 },
      "half_time_score":  { "home": 2, "away": 2 },
      "aggregate_score":  { "home": 2, "away": 2, "current_leg": 2, "total_legs": 2 },
      "period_label": "HT",
      "period_status": "half_time",
      "esid": 10,
      "epr": 1
    }
  ]
}

period_status mapping (derive from esid):

If Stages[] is empty (no live matches anywhere in the world — extremely rare for soccer, but plausible during the early-morning UTC lull):

{ "snapshot_ts": 1779305661, "matches": [] }