How to Connect Your ESPN League to Roster Locker

ESPN connects to Roster Locker in one of two ways, depending on one setting in your league: whether it's public or private. Public leagues link instantly from the URL. Private leagues use a short, self-serve form that stays entirely in your browser. ESPN is also our widest platform — it covers NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and WNBA. Here's each path.

On this platform: see what Roster Locker does for your ESPN leagues.

What you'll need

• Your ESPN league URL (or just the league ID from it). It looks like

fantasy.espn.com/football/league?leagueId=12345.

• Only if your league is private: two values from your own browser, called

SWID and espn_s2. We'll cover exactly where to find them below — you never email them to anyone.

First: is your league public or private?

It's a single setting in ESPN under League Settings → Visibility. You don't have to change anything — Roster Locker figures out which flow you need automatically when you paste your URL. If the league is public, you're connected in seconds. If it's private, the cookie form appears right where you are, no dead end.

Public leagues — paste the URL

1. Pick your sports. When you create your Roster Locker account, the first

step asks which sports you play. ESPN can serve NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and WNBA.

1. Find the ESPN step in the connect flow and paste your league URL (or

league ID) into "Paste your ESPN league URL," then hit Import ESPN League.

1. Tell us which team is yours. Public ESPN leagues have no login, so ESPN

can't tell us which of the teams is you. Roster Locker shows every team in the league and you tap yours — that's the "which team is yours?" picker.

That's it. Because there's no login on a public league, that one tap is all the identification we need.

Private leagues — the self-serve cookie form

If your league is set to private, ESPN's API returns a locked door. Instead of a dead end, Roster Locker reveals a short form right there asking for two values: SWID and espn_s2. These are cookies from your logged-in ESPN session — they act like a temporary key to read your own private league.

Where to find SWID and espn_s2

1. Open a new tab and make sure you're logged in at fantasy.espn.com.
2. Open your browser's Developer Tools (F12, or right-click → Inspect).
3. Go to the Application tab (Chrome/Edge) or the Storage tab (Firefox).
4. Under Cookies, click fantasy.espn.com.
5. Find SWID and espn_s2 in the list, and copy each value into the

matching field in Roster Locker.

Then hit Connect Private League. Roster Locker verifies the values by actually fetching your league before it stores anything — if they're wrong, nothing gets saved. Once it connects, you'll get the same "which team is yours?" picker as the public flow.

How we handle those two values

Those cookies act like a temporary login to your ESPN account, so we treat them that way:

• Only ever paste them into Roster Locker itself — never share them anywhere

public.

• They're encrypted before they touch our database, and decrypted only at

sync time to refresh your rosters.

• We still never ask for your actual ESPN password — the cookie approach is

read-only access to your own league data, nothing more. Not storing platform passwords is a hard rule across every platform we support.

Troubleshooting

• "This ESPN league is private." That's expected for a private league — the

cookie form appears right below the URL box. Follow the steps above; you don't need to change your league's visibility.

• The private connect was rejected. Re-copy SWID and espn_s2 — they can

expire when you log out of ESPN. Make sure you copied the full value of each, including the surrounding braces on SWID (it looks like {ABC12345-...}).

• Wrong team showing. Re-open the "which team is yours?" picker and tap the

correct team — public leagues rely on that pick to know which roster is yours.

• Latest moves missing. Leagues re-sync on a schedule; you can pull the

newest rosters immediately with the refresh icon on the Team tab.

Play on more than one platform?

One Roster Locker membership covers every sport and platform you play. Sleeper connects with just a username; MyFantasyLeague by league URL; Fleaflicker by account email; Fantrax by its Secret ID; and Fantasy Premier League by team ID. Guides for each are on the way — and inside the app, every connect step has a "Need help finding this?" link that walks you through it.

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