As Bluesky Booms, Sports Fans Don’t Need to Migrate From X—Yet

Throughout all the change at X (including its rebranding from Twitter), sports fans have proven to be some of Elon Musk’s most loyal customers. According to recent reports, views of sports-related content on the site are up 5% over the past 12 months, while most current U.S. users are NFL fans based on internal metrics. 

But there is now increasing evidence that they too are looking for a change.

After Election Day brought X its biggest traffic spike of the year, more than 115,000 accounts were deactivated, by Similarweb’s count. Individual users objected to Musk’s role in President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign as well as the tech titan’s closeness with the incoming administration. Others have cited complaints specific to X’s actual service, from the type of content its algorithms promote to its use of public posts to train AI products. The Guardian and Stephen King are among the biggest name departers. 

One winner of the latest exodus (X-odus?) has been Bluesky, an independent social site initially funded by then-Twitter leadership in 2019. The app has been perched atop iOS’ download charts over the last week as it more than doubled in size to roughly 20 million users, including sports names like ESPN analyst Mina Kimes, the NHL’s Seattle Kraken and MLB’s Cleveland Guardians, along with many of their followers, who all either created new accounts or became more active. (Sportico is also there now.)

“When we think about the core communities that really made micro-blogging as a format work on Twitter or other social platforms, sports was definitely a big one, especially for breaking news and real-time events,” Bluesky spokesperson Emily Liu said. “Within the last month or so, this really started to take off.”

Newcomers have been treated to many of the attributes that once marked Twitter, including an emphasis on spontaneous conversation and dialogue about events happening in the moment. While X pushes its “For You” feed, Bluesky is built around old-school, reverse-chronological lists of recent posts. Users also got to re-experience site outages and some features not yet being available, like advanced notification settings or trending topics lists. 

One element Bluesky hopes will set itself apart is the ability to tweak the service’s feed algorithm on an individual basis. As an example, Bluesky created a special Super Bowl-focused feed ahead of the big game, as well as an alternative option that emphasized Taylor Swift-related posts. For now though, the site’s biggest draw seems to be the fact that it’s not X.

Bluesky leaders (the company has about 20 full-time employees) first got a solid glimpse of sports’ impact on the service after Brazilians joined en masse once X was banned in the country.

“We would be watching our dashboards, and then whenever there would be a spike, we were like, ‘Okay, someone just made a goal,’” Liu said.

The addition of video on the platform led to another jump in sports-obsessed users, she said. Liu added that similar spikes were notable on Friday night as fans reacted to Jake Paul and Mike Tyson’s boxing match (or at least reacted to having difficulty watching the laggy streaming action). On Sunday, the ATP Finals, NFL and WNBA were all briefly among the site’s most used hashtags. 

That said, most of the biggest sports accounts on Bluesky are still posting on X as well, and many other big brands have not yet made the leap at all. Another X competitor, Meta’s Threads, has attracted close to 300 million monthly active users, including NBA newsbreaker Shams Charania and the NFL. Liu said Bluesky is working to attract more properties to the service.

In general, athletes, teams, leagues and reporters have shown a consistent willingness to post wherever their fans are, even if those places are owned by Musk, face a ban for political reasons, or have been sued for allegedly damaging teenagers’ mental health. 

More than those liabilities, the biggest concern for sports’ loudest voices appears to be a worry that they won’t be heard. Fans, on the other hand, are preparing themself for a world with more fractured social media destinations, where individual celebrities and communities dedicate their attention to different sites, and the biggest moments feel smaller because of it.