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Last year, a wave of sports media, leagues, and teams opened Bluesky accounts, in part in reaction to Elon Musk’s takeover of X, the formerly named Twitter.
X became a right-wing hangout, and Musk’s algorithms significantly reduced the reach of story links in X posts, destroying a key reason journalists posted on the platform. X has also seen notable outages, like on the first day of NFL free agency, which saw sports fans seeking information elsewhere.
Bluesky has grown impressively since fully launching in 2024 (it had a soft, invite-only launch in 2023), with over 34 million users currently. That’s still less than a tenth of Twitter’s user base. Key players in sports like the NFL and ESPN’s news breaker, Adam Schefter, are still not on Bluesky, and many have minimal followings.
The NBA opened an account on Bluesky in February but has yet to post and has fewer than 20,000 followers, a drop in the bucket for the digital-leading league. MLB, the other U.S. major league on Bluesky, hasn’t posted and has just over 24,000 followers. According to this story, 20 MLB teams are on Bluesky, but only five post regularly.
The NBA has a Bluesky account, but has yet to post.
The NBA and MLB’s usernames are their domain names: @nba.com and @mlb.com. That right now is the only way to authenticate on Bluesky, said Harry Packer, who is leading the sports efforts at Bluesky. There are no check marks like Twitter doled out before Musk turned them into a money-making exercise. So, even Packer can’t say how many sports teams, leagues, and high-profile sports media are on Bluesky, but a verification system could roll out later this year.
“Sports is a top priority, to make that clear, I think it’s probably the top priority for us, to be honest,” Packer said. “And our ambition there is simply to become the best place for real-time sports discussion.”
“There’s some really important things we do, like not de-ranking links to other services in our algorithm,” he said. “That’s key in sports. I think because, you know, it allows sports writers to drive traffic to their articles. It allows broadcasters to drive viewers and the team to do the same.” In fact, a selling point for Bluesky is it allows users to create their own algorithms, and not be at the mercy of what others decide will fill your feeds.
Packer also touts Bluesky’s moderation, claiming harassment is less pronounced than other platforms. “The last couple years, sports has been marred by so many different forms of harassment that, you know, we’re doing a real top job, I think of prioritizing that.”
Bluesky currently has no revenue and a skeleton staff, so it is not paying for sports league partnerships. (The microblogging site calls itself a for-profit public benefits company, sort of capitalism with a social mission, in this case, developing platforms for decentralizing public conversations.) That is clearly causing a standoff with the NFL, which ordered teams that had dipped into Bluesky to get out.
“We don’t have an official presence on platforms where we don’t have a deal with them and frankly, they are too small for something like that at the moment,” an NFL source said.
When Twitter took off 15 years ago, with a big assist from fan interest in the NFL, the league saw a platform making money off it and not handing over a piece. Part of the reason the league created a venture fund around that time to invest in NFL-adjacent businesses was it didn’t want another Twitter-like company to emerge that suckled off the league. And there are official paid partnerships where the NFL has a presence on social media platforms.
MLS, for example, plans to open an account soon.
Some media personalities and outlets have healthy followings on Bluesky. ESPN’s Mina Kimes has nearly 290,000 followers and has made over 2,000 posts. That beats her employer, which has 184,000 followers and fewer than 500 posts. (To toot about this publication, well, it has75,000 followers.)
ESPN’s Mina Kimes is one of the top sports personalities on Bluesky.
Packer won’t comment on any personality specifically. Still, when asked about getting more of Kimes’ peers like Adam Schefter, he responded, “We are proactively going out and speaking to people in certain cases, and some of it is reactive as well, so sort of a yes and no answer, okay, but people do want to get in touch with us. We have a dedicated inbox where they can pass on their inquiries, and we can get back to them.”
Bluesky’s account growth far outpaced Twitter’s in its formative years, though that was a different time before social media consumed society. Packer points out that Bluesky is still a startup, and it doesn’t have the resources to pay big-name sports brands to create a presence on the platform.
We have to be really, I think, quite clever around allocating resources. So right now, it’s kind of just getting people comfortable with what the other value opportunity is here in the audience that we have, and I think people are really sort of understanding and recognizing that now.”
Source: https://awfulannouncing.com/tech/bluesky-sports-top-priority-growth-spurt.html
X became a right-wing hangout, and Musk’s algorithms significantly reduced the reach of story links in X posts, destroying a key reason journalists posted on the platform. X has also seen notable outages, like on the first day of NFL free agency, which saw sports fans seeking information elsewhere.
Bluesky has grown impressively since fully launching in 2024 (it had a soft, invite-only launch in 2023), with over 34 million users currently. That’s still less than a tenth of Twitter’s user base. Key players in sports like the NFL and ESPN’s news breaker, Adam Schefter, are still not on Bluesky, and many have minimal followings.
The NBA opened an account on Bluesky in February but has yet to post and has fewer than 20,000 followers, a drop in the bucket for the digital-leading league. MLB, the other U.S. major league on Bluesky, hasn’t posted and has just over 24,000 followers. According to this story, 20 MLB teams are on Bluesky, but only five post regularly.
The NBA has a Bluesky account, but has yet to post.The NBA and MLB’s usernames are their domain names: @nba.com and @mlb.com. That right now is the only way to authenticate on Bluesky, said Harry Packer, who is leading the sports efforts at Bluesky. There are no check marks like Twitter doled out before Musk turned them into a money-making exercise. So, even Packer can’t say how many sports teams, leagues, and high-profile sports media are on Bluesky, but a verification system could roll out later this year.
“Sports is a top priority, to make that clear, I think it’s probably the top priority for us, to be honest,” Packer said. “And our ambition there is simply to become the best place for real-time sports discussion.”
Packer points to several features distinguishing Bluesky from X, including not limiting the reach of posts, including a news story link. “There’s some really important things we do, like not de-ranking links to other services in our algorithm,” he said. “That’s key in sports. I think because, you know, it allows sports writers to drive traffic to their articles. It allows broadcasters to drive viewers and the team to do the same.” In fact, a selling point for Bluesky is it allows users to create their own algorithms, and not be at the mercy of what others decide will fill your feeds.
Packer also touts Bluesky’s moderation, claiming harassment is less pronounced than other platforms. “The last couple years, sports has been marred by so many different forms of harassment that, you know, we’re doing a real top job, I think of prioritizing that.”
Bluesky currently has no revenue and a skeleton staff, so it is not paying for sports league partnerships. (The microblogging site calls itself a for-profit public benefits company, sort of capitalism with a social mission, in this case, developing platforms for decentralizing public conversations.) That is clearly causing a standoff with the NFL, which ordered teams that had dipped into Bluesky to get out.
“We don’t have an official presence on platforms where we don’t have a deal with them and frankly, they are too small for something like that at the moment,” an NFL source said.
When Twitter took off 15 years ago, with a big assist from fan interest in the NFL, the league saw a platform making money off it and not handing over a piece. Part of the reason the league created a venture fund around that time to invest in NFL-adjacent businesses was it didn’t want another Twitter-like company to emerge that suckled off the league. And there are official paid partnerships where the NFL has a presence on social media platforms.
”We are in conversations with all of the major leagues around how we can support them if they were to start posting on Bluesky potentially,” said Packer. “We’re working towards a space where, I think hopefully, over this summer, we do start seeing more teams and more leagues officially posting from their accounts.” MLS, for example, plans to open an account soon.
Some media personalities and outlets have healthy followings on Bluesky. ESPN’s Mina Kimes has nearly 290,000 followers and has made over 2,000 posts. That beats her employer, which has 184,000 followers and fewer than 500 posts. (To toot about this publication, well, it has75,000 followers.)
ESPN’s Mina Kimes is one of the top sports personalities on Bluesky.Packer won’t comment on any personality specifically. Still, when asked about getting more of Kimes’ peers like Adam Schefter, he responded, “We are proactively going out and speaking to people in certain cases, and some of it is reactive as well, so sort of a yes and no answer, okay, but people do want to get in touch with us. We have a dedicated inbox where they can pass on their inquiries, and we can get back to them.”
Bluesky’s account growth far outpaced Twitter’s in its formative years, though that was a different time before social media consumed society. Packer points out that Bluesky is still a startup, and it doesn’t have the resources to pay big-name sports brands to create a presence on the platform.
We have to be really, I think, quite clever around allocating resources. So right now, it’s kind of just getting people comfortable with what the other value opportunity is here in the audience that we have, and I think people are really sort of understanding and recognizing that now.”
Source: https://awfulannouncing.com/tech/bluesky-sports-top-priority-growth-spurt.html
