Bluesky is making it easier to know when an NBA game is happening with a new test that adds a red border to the NBA’s profile picture, along with a “live” callout below it. When you click the profile picture, you’ll be taken out of Bluesky and to whatever live event the organization is promoting, Bluesky COO Rose Wang announced yesterday.
“We aren’t trapping you in Bluesky,” Wang writes in her post. “We want you to use Bluesky to discover what’s happening.”
In the announcement, Wang quote-posted an NBA promotional post about two games that were set to take place last night, indicating that the badge would have shown up during them. Bluesky didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s email asking for a screenshot of the new indicator and whether it plans to extend the test to other sports or non-sports organizations. As TechCrunch points out, Wang confirmed that the feature will appear for WNBA games as well.
Though Wang doesn’t say it, her post feels like a dig at the various deals Twitter made with sports organizations like the NFL, MLB and NHL, and the NBA to stream their content on its platform, rather than linking out to their streams elsewhere. In an interview with SportsPro last month, Wang said Bluesky doesn’t have the means or desire to take on partnerships like those, but the new live badge testing shows it’s certainly not above doing what it can to nurture its burgeoning “Sports Bluesky.”
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