NFL teams can’t use Bluesky

The NFL told the New England Patriots to shut down the team’s Bluesky account. Patriots VP of content Fred Kirsch said the team was told that Bluesky is “not an approved social media platform for the NFL yet,” addressing a fan question on a January 16th episode of the Patriots Unfiltered podcast, as spotted by Awful Announcing.

Kirsch said the team “briefly” had a Bluesky account before the league asked it to take the account down. The NFL told Front Office Sports in November it was aware of Bluesky but had no presence there, Awful Announcing notes. The league did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Football teams are allowed to post on other platforms, including X, which the NFL has a content partnership with that includes the “NFL Portal” that X CEO Linda Yaccarino revealed in October. The league also has a content deal with Reddit and a heavy presence on Threads and other Meta-owned platforms.

Bluesky has been growing steadily, with some occasional recent spikes in signups. The platform is closing in on 29 million users as of this writing, nearly doubling where it was two months ago. Whether that’s enough for the NFL is an open question, but Front Office also reported Bluesky was working to get leagues on board with the platform. The Patriots are “ready to go” whenever it does, Kirsch said on Patriots Unfiltered.