The NBA has broken ranks with the NFL and established an official presence on Bluesky, the rival social media platform to X.
The world’s biggest basketball league launched its account over the last week, though it did not post during its All-Star Weekend.
The NBA and some of its teams join Major League Baseball in creating an account on the platform, which was set up by former Twitter staff as a challenger to X, as it has now been rebranded by Elon Musk, and President Trump’s Truth Social.
It stands in stark contrast to the NFL, which has refused to approve the use of Bluesky by its teams, despite it boasting more than 32m users.
An official for the New England Patriots said the NFL asked the former Super Bowl winners to leave Bluesky after they set up an account.
The NFL has not commented on its Bluesky policy but X pays the NFL to host exclusive content, renewing its deal last year.
Bluesky boost
The NBA’s adoption of Bluesky, albeit without ditching X, represents a major vote of confidence for the challenger platform.
The NBA account amassed thousands of followers before even posting, but has been given the nba.com username, rather than being forced to use a bsky.social domain.
The league joins the Portland Trail Blazers, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks on the platform.
Bluesky is a social media app that was created as an independent entity from Musk’s X in 2021, having been announced by then-Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey to explore decentralising the blue bird platform.
Since the 2024 US Presidential election in November, the combination of Trump in the White House with Musk as an official government employee (in DOGE, the department of government efficiency) has seen Bluesky’s membership number double.
Twitter is said to have over 240m daily active users.
