The Patriots tried to be social media trailblazers by becoming the first NFL team on Bluesky, a social media app that’s become an alternative to X/Twitter.
But the NFL intercepted the Pats’ attempt.
Fred Kirsch, vice president of content for Kraft Sports & Entertainment, the Patriots’ umbrella company, recently spoke on the Patriots Unfiltered podcast and was asked by a listener if the team has considered creating a Bluesky account.
“Right now we’re not allowed to,” Kirsch said. “We had an account briefly on Bluesky, but the league asked us to take it down because it’s not an approved social media platform for the NFL yet. … Whenever the league gives us the green light, we’ll get back on Bluesky.”
A Patriots spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since X owner Elon Musk became entrenched with Trump’s election campaign and administration, several celebrities, journalists, and media outlets have quit X owner Elon Musk’s site entirely, while others have stayed on Twitter while gradually increasing a presence on Bluesky. But sports teams and leagues have been some of the last to follow on that front.
None of the big four men’s leagues have official accounts on Bluesky; the NWSL and PWHL are on Bluesky, which launched in 2023, and has about 25 million users as of December.
Multiple leagues have longstanding content deals with X, and the NFL renewed its own with the company in April 2024. The deal, which started back in 2013, includes the ability to post in-game highlights. In November, X introduced the NFL portal, which gives users access to news, standings, and chatter in one place. It’s unknown whether the NFL’s deal with X includes a preventative clause from teams creating an account on competing apps, but if it doesn’t, the NFL’s ask of the Patriots sparks antitrust concerns.
Each NFL team is an independent business from the league. The NFL interfering with teams’ social media-related decisions—when teams and platforms such as Bluesky could mutually benefit from working together—could be viewed as anticompetitive.
“The antitrust laws would definitely be relevant here if, in fact, there was an exclusive agreement” between the NFL and X, says Barak Richman, a business law professor at George Washington University. “Then the next question is: Does the NFL have a pro-competitive reason? And it might. It could say if we go with unapproved outlets, we lose our message. It could be a thing with the algorithm. A good antitrust explanation does not include, ‘Well, President Trump would get really pissed off at us.’”
Spokespeople from Bluesky and the NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
