The X Exodus: Can BlueSky Compare for Sports?

November 27, 2024 by Staff

You may have seen an influx of media reports about users leaving X (formerly known as Twitter) in recent weeks. The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, has dismissed the reports, hinting that the media has been saying the same thing ever since he bought the platform in 2022. There is some truth in what Musk says – the downfall of X/Twitter has long been predicted, and it’s still standing – yet there is also truth that rival platforms, notably BlueSky, have seen users arriving in record numbers. What’s also true is that some big names have left X, including The Guardian.

Aside from all the politics, though, it is indisputable that X has been the best social media for sports over the years. It is the hub for breaking sports news, highlights during live games, and, to an extent, interacting with athletes themselves. But we should your attention, too, to German soccer club St Pauli, which has become the first major sports team to leave the platform, announcing that they would in November a day after the Guardian. Look, St Pauli is not the Lakers or Cowboys, but it’s not unrealistic to suggest others could follow.

Plenty of great alternatives for sports fans

What, though, are the alternatives? The good news is there are plenty, ranging from BlueSky, which has positioned itself as a kind of X clone, to new types of platforms like the Sports Millions blog, which features everything from sports-themed games to weekly predictions to breaking news. Others, like Meta’s Threads, are also trying to carve a slice out of the (potential) void left by X. Due to its association with Facebook and Instagram, Threads quickly found a huge user base of a few hundred million, but it arguably still lacks the punchiness of X or the freshness of Bluesky.

Bluesky is an interesting alternative. As mentioned, it has really been a beneficiary of user migration in recent weeks, reporting one million new sign-ups in a day at one point. It remains dwarfed by the behemoth social media platforms, but it is growing at a steady clip. It also has a few aces up its sleeve, including its open-sourced software and the ability for users to govern what appears on their feeds. It is the latter that should be of most interest to sports fans.

For those of us who go on social media for sports, the idea that you can tailor your feed to filter out the other stuff is fairly compelling. Yes, you can do that to an extent on X with the “Following” tab, but the “For You” tab puts you at the mercy of the algorithm. BlueSky has a feature called “Starter Packs,” which allows you to follow accounts en masse related to your interests. Once you’ve created your feed, there are numerous tools to filter out unwanted content. Importantly, there are also tools to block out any AI bots training on your data, something that X and Meta products will not offer.

Bluesky is only beginning its sports “journey”

For balance, however, we should say that Bluesky is not fully developed as a sports hub. It lacks many of the top athletes and teams who post on X, Instagram, and TikTok. If you were looking to get the fastest breaking news about sports, X is still probably your best shot. However – and this is important –the number of sports ‘power’ users is growing at a rapid pace. USA Today has compiled a list of prominent accounts in its NFL, MLB, NBA, and other sports leagues “Starter Packs,” and it is impressive how many they’ve added in recent months. Joining them now might put you ahead of the curve.

In the end, all of this is speculation. X may continue to be the leading sports social media platform for years to come. And in turn, Bluesky might fall flat. But if this apparent exodus continues, there are alternatives to X. Bluesky certainly could be one of them.