Comment by mjd
5 hours ago
Best of luck with this. About twenty years ago there was a website that displayed play-by-play of games in progress with a much more minimal display than yours: just a scoreboard, balls and strikes count, and an indication of who was on base.
MLB crushed them with a copyright infringement lawsuit, claiming copyright over the plain factual description of the play-by-play. It was bullshit, of course, since simple factual descriptions aren't protected by copyright. But website guy couldn't fight MLB in federal court.
Sorry I don't remember the name of the site. I hope it turns out better for you than it did for them.
My guess is this is leveraging GDX same as "Gameday" uses (or used to use). https://gdx.mlb.com/components/copyright.txt states
> Only individual, non-commercial, non-bulk use of the Materials is permitted
Unsure if this falls within. I have written my own scripts against the XML regularly updated there, but am unsure if they allow it to be used on a shared site.
plaintextsports.com has been doing this for a long time. It has always been free. ie 'non-commercial'.
https://plaintextsports.com/mlb/2026-06-17/tb-lad#play-by-pl...
edit: typo