A Chicago Bears fan and a Seattle Seahawks fan sued the NFL in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday claiming that a league policy barring teams from using Bluesky violates antitrust law and should be enjoined by a federal judge.
Bears fan Patrick Brown and Seahawks fan Collin Vincent have Bluesky accounts and want to follow their teams on the platform. As Sportico detailed last month, the NFL and its 32 franchises agree to distribute news on platforms, including X, TikTok and YouTube, that the league has a partnership agreement with. This policy attracted headlines when the New England Patriots briefly had a Bluesky presence but removed it upon receiving direction from the league about the policy.
As Brown and Vincent tell it, the league’s policy constitutes “an unlawful group boycott and restraint of free speech and commerce.” They point out that league policies restraining an individual team are subject to antitrust scrutiny since each NFL team is a competing business. When competing businesses join hands to restrain how they compete, their agreement could run into antitrust problems if their restraint harms a protected market.
The complaint, authored by Thomas H. Burt and other attorneys from Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, argues that the NFL’s “content partnership” with X to provide “in-progress game highlights, including all touchdowns, moments after they happen” is problematic, since X is Bluesky’s “direct competitor.” The plaintiffs also contend the NFL’s deal with X is “exclusive” and compels teams to “refuse to deal with Bluesky.”
Further, the complaint notes that Bluesky has over 28 million users—nowhere near X’s estimated 650 million users—many of whom use or used X but are looking for an alternative. Brown and Vincent bluntly assert that some NFL fans “do not want to have to follow their teams on Elon Musk’s X platform.”
The NFL did not respond to a request for comment but will answer the complaint in the coming weeks and seek its dismissal.
Expect the league to raise several arguments.
First, and most obviously, NFL fans do not need to rely on X for information about their team. Other social media platforms, news providers and team websites, among many other content providers, provide fans with myriad options.
Second, while antitrust law protects competition in the market, there must be meaningful harm to a market relevant for antitrust scrutiny. The plaintiffs say the relevant market is the market for NFL news in the U.S. The NFL could argue this market contains numerous content options. Likewise, it could point out there is no inherent right to follow an NFL team.
Third, the league could maintain it can’t be forced to provide content on any platform. It is a private joint venture of teams that can operate as it sees fit. The First Amendment would also be implicated if a business were compelled to express speech about sports and entertainment news on a platform.
Fourth, courts have accorded pro leagues, like other franchisors, with broad discretion in setting rules for member franchises. It’s true, as the complaint points out, that NFL rules restricting franchise relocation (Al Davis/Raiders’ litigation), apparel sales (American Needle v. NFL), and, most recently, broadcasting restrictions (NFL Sunday Ticket litigation) are subject to antitrust scrutiny, since they restrain what an individual franchise might wish to do on its own.
But scrutiny does not necessarily lead to liability. As Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained in a 2020 order, pro leagues are joint ventures and teams are expected to cooperate in certain ways, including in ways that impact business decisions. In that light, the NFL might argue that Bluesky is a new social media platform and that it wishes to further evaluate it before striking a deal.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who has been in the news this week for issuing a ruling that blocks Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team from access to Treasury Department systems.
