Livescore in PHP?

Codewalkernewbie here, hello everybody!

I am creating a livescore application with PHP, XML, MySql on Apache.
Would love some help trying to trim appl further.
Making the updates for the visitors faster and more frequent.

This is how it works right know:
script
Retrieve ALL XML-files via HTTPS, store them locally.
Parse files and generates a HTML-page for each game.
end script
# The script runs twice in 30 seconds. (Set up in apache)
# The visitors view the HTML-page with has a META-REFRESH of 30 secs.
# the XML-files are three per game; lineup, report and stats. Sometimes there is up to 6 games at once, making it 18 XML-files.
Lineup contains lineup and some other gamedata like judges,arena,capacity.
Report contains all events of the game, what team, what player and what time he did what. Also includes teamstats.
Finally stats contains playerstats like playingtime, goals, assist and much much more. This is avaliable after the game today but will be continuously updated soon.

We are setting up a "mini-server" on the webserver to take care of the output of the HTML-pages only, fastest easiest way possible, freeing up Apache.

We have already created a RSS-feed containing data on which files have been updated, so I don´t have to retrieve them all, all the time.
Now(need to write code first) I just read the RSS checking for updates files, and retrieve them, parse them and create a new HTML-page for that particular game.

I would like to avoid storing everything in a database(Other then a TEMP table within the script)?

How can I get frequently updated stats the fastest, most reliable way to the user/visitor?

Please think outside the box. Everything is changeable, from the structure of the XML-files, to the page which the visitor viewes.

I have faith in you!

Sorry to bother mate, but I have a question for you tangent to your post. Where do livescore sites get their scores from? Do they have people tracking tens of leagues live, or is there a central database or what is it? i really appreciate your help.