BroBible
The NFL is the king of marketing in the sports world. So why would the league want to limit the exposure its teams get on social media? That question was raised this week when Vice President of Content for Kraft Sports + Entertainment/New England Patriots Fred Kirsch made a comment about Bluesky on the latest episode of the Patriots Unfiltered podcast.
Bluesky is a social media service that was created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey as an alternative to the app now called X that is currently owned by Elon Musk. (Follow BroBible here.)
The New England Patriots are on X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and even TikTok. But they aren’t on Bluesky. Not that they don’t want to be. They actually had a Bluesky account at one point. Until the NFL put the kibosh on it.
“Please consider adding Bluesky to your social media outreach,” Kirsch said, reading a request from a Patriots fan on the podcast. “NFL content/engagement is growing there with folks like Mina Kimes leading the way.”
“Right now we’re not allowed to,” Kirsch said in response. “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.”
This appeared to be news to his co-hosts.
“So, we’re ready to go,” Kirsch continued. “Whenever the league gives us the green light we’ll get back on Bluesky.”
It’s certainly interesting that the NFL pushed for its teams to jump on Twitter/X alternative Threads, owned by Meta, when it was released, but has doesn’t approve of Bluesky.
The topic was addressed by Front Office Sports back in November.
“Meta said in October that Threads — Meta’s text-based social network that launched in July 2023 — had 275 million active users,” AJ Perez of FOS wrote. “The transition for leagues and teams (as well as individuals) is a much more seamless affair since it’s built alongside Instagram, so followers and verification badges can easily be migrated over to Threads as opposed to starting anew on Bluesky, which has nearly doubled in size over the last month to 23 million users.”
As of January 22, 2025, Bluesky reportedly had 28.7 million registered users.
It’s also interesting that an NFL spokesperson told FOS that the league is “constantly looking to increase the number of ways fans can easily engage with the NFL across all forms of media.” So what’s the problem with a team like the Patriots using Bluesky?
The post New England Patriots VP Says NFL Told Them To Terminate Their Bluesky Account appeared first on BroBible.
