sportyR

sportyR is an R package, authored by Ross Drucker, for drawing scaled ggplot2 representations of sports playing surfaces. Every surface is rendered directly from the governing body's rule-book specifications, so the geometry — line widths, arc radii, court and field dimensions — is correct by construction.

That accuracy matters: when you plot tracking data, shot locations, or pass maps on top of a sportyR surface, the coordinates line up with reality instead of an approximation.

Supported surfaces

sportyR ships geom_* helpers for basketball, football, hockey, baseball, soccer, tennis, volleyball, curling, and lacrosse, with league-specific presets (NBA, WNBA, NCAA, NFL, NHL, MLB, FIFA, and more) selectable via a single argument.

Installation

Install the released version from CRAN:

install.packages("sportyR")

Or the development version from the SportsDataverse r-universe:

install.packages("sportyR", repos = c("https://sportsdataverse.r-universe.dev", getOption("repos")))

Quick start

Drawing a regulation surface is a single call, and the result is an ordinary ggplot object you can layer onto:

library(sportyR)
 
# An NBA half-court...
geom_basketball(league = "NBA", display_range = "offense")
 
# ...or a full NHL rink
geom_hockey(league = "NHL")

Because the output is a ggplot, you add your data with the usual geom_point(), geom_path(), or geom_density_2d() layers — shot charts, skater tracks, and expected-goals maps all compose naturally on top of the surface.

Learn more

• Documentation: sportyR.sportsdataverse.org
• Python sibling: sportypy brings the same surfaces to matplotlib.