The NFL has instructed the New England Patriots to close the team’s Blue Sky account. Patriots Vice President of Content Fred Kirsch answered fan questions on the Jan. 16 episode of the “Patriots Unfiltered” podcast, reported by Awful Announcing, in which Brewsky said, “We are not yet on any NFL-approved social media platform. “No,” the team was told.
Kirsch said the team had a Blue Sky account “for a short period of time” before the league required it to be deleted. The NFL told Front Office Sports in November that it knew about Bruski but didn’t have a presence, Awful Announcer notes. The league declined to comment when we contacted them.
Football teams are allowed to post on other platforms, including X, and the NFL has content partnerships including the NFL Portal, which X CEO Linda Yaccarino unveiled in October. The league also has a content deal with Reddit and a large presence on Threads and other meta-owned platforms.
Bluesky has been steadily growing, with occasional spikes in enrollment recently. The platform has nearly 29 million users as of this writing, nearly double the number of users it had two months ago. Whether that’s enough for the NFL is an open question, but the front office also reported that Bluesky is working to get the league on board with the platform. The Patriots are always “ready to go,” Kirsch said on Patriots Unfiltered.
Updated Jan. 22: Added that the NFL declined to comment.
