The NFL directed the New England Patriots to delete the team’s Bluesky account, Fred Kirsch, the team’s VP of content, said on a January 16 episode of the Patriots Unfiltered podcast.
While the team briefly had a Bluesky account, Kirsch said it was taken down because it’s “not an approved social media platform for the NFL yet.”
Bluesky was founded as a research initiative by Jack Dorsey in 2019 but really emerged as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X and shot up in popularity after November’s presidential election. It crossed 25 million users last month, as more and more people seemed to become dismayed with Musk’s shift to the political right.
Still, several sports leagues rely on X for accessing large fan bases, including the NFL, which has an ongoing content partnership with the platform that dates back to 2013. An NFL spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.