Connect SportsAPI Pro to Gemini CLI via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → SportsAPI Pro Football, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

SportsAPI Pro Football + Gemini

Football data from SportsAPI Pro: leagues and seasons, standings and season leaders, live scores and daily schedules, match lineups, incidents, statistics, head-to-head, shot maps and best players, teams, squads, players and managers. API key.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

SPORTSAPIPRO_API_KEY

Step 1 — Get credentials

Setting up takes about 2 minutes. You need a SportsAPI Pro account; the free plan is enough to try it.

1. Sign up at sportsapipro.com/register.
2. Open the Dashboard and copy the key from API Credentials into SPORTSAPIPRO_API_KEY. Paste only the key, without spaces or a header name.
3. Install the connector. Run sportsapipro_get_account_status to check the key: it shows your plan, the daily request limit, the requests used today and how many are left.

Cloud and self-hosted work the same way: the connector only needs the key, which it sends to https://api.sportsapipro.com/v2/football as the x-api-key header.

Daily quota: the quota is shared by every sport on the key and resets at midnight UTC: 100 requests a day on the free plan, 7,500 on Pro and 75,000 on Ultra. Each tool call makes one request. sportsapipro_get_account_status shows what is left.

Ids: tournaments, seasons, teams, players, managers and matches have numeric ids. sportsapipro_search finds any of them by name; sportsapipro_list_leagues lists tournaments by country (a slug such as england). A season id is not a year: get it from sportsapipro_list_tournament_seasons. Common tournament ids: 17 Premier League, 8 LaLiga, 35 Bundesliga, 23 Serie A, 34 Ligue 1, 7 Champions League.

Times and paging: kick-off times are Unix timestamps in UTC (startTimestamp), which the AI converts before quoting a time. sportsapipro_list_season_matches and sportsapipro_list_team_matches take direction (next or last) and a 0-indexed page; there is a next page while hasNextPage is true. sportsapipro_list_matches_by_date answers the top 50 tournaments of the day, and totalTournamentsOnDate says how many play in total.

Coverage: football only. The key also works for other sports, which this connector does not cover. Coverage depth follows the competition tier: lower divisions can answer fewer statistics, or a 404.

Common errors: 401 means a missing or wrong key: copy it again from API Credentials. Regenerating the key invalidates the old one, so update the connector afterwards. 403 means access denied or a suspended account: check your account on the SportsAPI Pro dashboard. 429 means the daily quota is used up: it resets at midnight UTC.

What it reads: countries, leagues and cups with their tournament ids, and the seasons of each tournament; league tables with promotion and relegation markers, and the season leaders per statistic (rating, goals, expected goals, assists, shots, saves, clean sheets, cards and more); live matches with score and minute, the matches of a date, and the upcoming and recent matches of a season or a team; one match with venue, referee and managers, its lineups and formations with player ratings, its incidents (goals, cards, substitutions, VAR decisions), team statistics per half, the head-to-head record of both teams and managers, the shot map with expected goals, the best players and the average positions; teams with venue and recent form, squads with shirt number, age, market value and contract expiry, player profiles and season-by-season statistics, managers and their career history.

Read-only: every tool only reads. Nothing on your SportsAPI Pro account changes.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Gemini

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Gemini CLI reads MCP servers from ~/.gemini/settings.json (on Windows %USERPROFILE%\.gemini\settings.json). Add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "httpUrl": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

1. Create an MCP API key in AnythingMCP under MCP Servers → your server → API keys, and paste it in place of YOUR_MCP_API_KEY.
2. Save the file and restart gemini.
3. Run /mcp inside Gemini CLI (or gemini mcp list in your shell) — anythingmcp should show as connected.
4. Start prompting — Gemini CLI can now call the SportsAPI Pro Football tools.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Show me the current Premier League table and the top five scorers this season."
• "Which football matches are being played right now, and what is the score and minute of each?"
• "For Arsenal's last match, give me the lineups, the goals and cards, the team statistics and the shot map with expected goals."
• "Before the next Real Madrid vs Barcelona match, show me the head-to-head record and each team's last five results."
• "List Bayern Munich's squad with position, shirt number, age and contract expiry."

FAQ

Where does Gemini CLI look for MCP servers? In ~/.gemini/settings.json for your user, or in .gemini/settings.json inside a project. gemini mcp list shows each server and whether it connects.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
• Connect to Claude