BroBible
An antitrust lawsuit has been filed by two football fans against the NFL for not allowing its teams to use the social media app Bluesky. They claim the NFL is engaging in “an unlawful group boycott and restraint of free speech and commerce.”
Three weeks ago, Fred Kirsch, Vice President of Content for Kraft Sports + Entertainment/New England Patriots, said on an episode of the Patriots Unfiltered podcast that the team did have an account on Bluesky, but they were told to shut it down by the NFL.
“Right now we’re not allowed to,” Kirsch replied to a fan asking him to add the team to the app. “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.”
On Tuesday, Patrick Brown and Collin Vincent filed a 14-page complaint in the Southern District of New York complaining that the NFL is not allowing them to follow their favorite teams, the Bears and Seahawks respectively, on Bluesky. They claim that the NFL not allowing teams to post on Bluesky is anti-competitive behavior that harms both the teams and fans.
“Where the teams meet their fans on social media is between the teams and the fans,” an attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas Burt, told Front Office Sports. “The NFL does not have the legal right to inject themselves into that decision.”
The lawsuit adds that there are NFL fans that “do not want to have to follow their teams on Elon Musk’s X platform. As consumers, they should be free to decide that they do not want to do business with a particular outlet or brand.”
Sports Business Journal reported in January that the NFL wants Bluesky (follow BroBible here) to become a paid partner before allowing teams to use the social media platform.
“If all 32 teams organically got on Bluesky, the platform could create a robust NFL news hub out of those accounts without much work at all,” Sports Business Journal explained. “The NFL knows exactly what that would be worth to Bluesky, and wants to be paid for it.”
Brown and Vincent are seeking an injunction (and attorney fees) as “the injunction would deprive the NFL of nothing, except the centralized power that it has unlawfully claimed and has no right to.” The NFL has yet to comment on the lawsuit.
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