When a cheating scandal erupts in sports, there’s no better place to be than on X (formerly Twitter).
As new details surrounding allegations of illegal scouting practices by the University of Michigan football team have emerged over the last two weeks, X users regularly discovered incriminating evidence, distributed commentary both hilarious and insightful, and described each new turn in the investigation faster than anyone else.
The experience has proven just how central the platform remains to diehard sports fans. And also what’s at risk as X continues morphing into something new.
Elon Musk marked his one-year anniversary taking over the company late last week, giving outsiders an opportunity to measure the results so far. They’re not good.
The Wall Street Journal reported that X’s daily active usership via mobile apps dropped by 16% in September compared to last year. Ad spending is down as much as 50%. A year after Musk bought the company for $44 billion, it’s worth less than half that today by X’s own accounting.
Some marquee sports accounts have grown quieter, too. According to analysis from Social Blade, LeBron James hadn’t gone a month without adding more than 30 posts to his account in years. He’s dipped below that number six times already in 2023. The NBA’s output, meanwhile, dropped 40% year-over-year in September, according to Social Blade.
Partially, that’s due to changes in the types of content X shows its users, preferring to promote videos over streams of quick, text-based posts. Complaints about misinformation have also grown louder under the new regime. (Check twice before sharing the next viral photo of Connor Stalions with a member of the Wolverines program.)
The result is a sports community on the platform that can feel both sparser and more cacophonous.
Still, fans seem to be more resilient to the changes than other groups. Or as The New York Times put it last week, “As Users Abandon X, Sports Twitter Endures.” Social Blade has Adam Schefter posting more than he did in either of the past two Septembers. NFL chief media officer Brian Rolapp specifically complimented X CEO Linda Yaccarino for her “great work innovating to make the platform better” on the site. On Sunday afternoon, the top 15 trending X topics were all NFL-related, followed by two soccer topics and 12 more American football ones. You don’t have to squint too hard to see the similarities between X and linear television, where sports increasingly dominates a diminishing audience’s attention.
Yaccarino has reportedly been trying to grow the number and kinds of official sports video clips that appear on X (in part to boost the ad revenue that is generated from messages attached to those highlights). But Musk also has his attention elsewhere, like turning the company into a banking and payments provider, or making it into a WeChat-like “everything app.”
One of the biggest reasons sports fans remain on X is the lack of a compelling alternative. While other niches have found new homes on Bluesky, Threads or Mastodon, no other platform currently offers near the same level of sports news, highlights, commentary and conversation, all basically coming in real-time. Its ability to stay ahead in that race will determine how much longer Musk can command sports fans’ attention.
The first year of his reign has already provided a lesson to sports operators, one that smart leaders recognized long before the tech tycoon carried a sink into Twitter’s headquarters. It’s the same thought that savvy organizations have had about their in-venue experiences, and the possibility of building other ways for teams to connect with supporters.
The loudest place is not the only one. There are more fans out there, if you know where to look.
