If there was a worst possible time on the sports calendar for X to suffer an outage, it might be the start of NFL free agency.
And lo and behold, the Elon Musk-owned social media platform went down on Monday morning — just hours ahead of the start of the NFL’s legal tampering period, which begins at 12 p.m. ET.
X initially suffered an outage overnight, with thousands of users reporting outages early Monday morning. While services were restored for a few hours, the site and app went back down just before 10 a.m. ET, with more than 40,000 users reporting outages according to DownDetector.com.
While NFL free agents can’t officially sign new deals until Wednesday, Monday’s legal tampering period effectively marks the start of the league’s free agency as teams and players are allowed to negotiate and agree upon new contracts. As one might expect, that makes for a hectic time on social media, with reporters routinely breaking news regarding the ongoing discussions and new deals.
In fact, even the lead up to Monday afternoon has proven plenty chaotic, with Myles Garrett rescinding his trade request to remain with the Cleveland Browns, the Pittsburgh Steelers trading for Seattle Seahawks star wide receiver DK Metcalf, the Los Angeles Rams agreeing to terms with Davante Adams (who had been released by the New York Jets and thus eligible to negotiate early) and reigning MVP Josh Allen agreeing to a record-breaking extension with the Buffalo Bills. And that was just Sunday. Even Monday morning saw ESPN’s Adam Schefter break the news that the Steelers were a candidate to sign quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who figures to feature prominently into Monday’s news cycle.
That will likely still be the case — it just might not be on X. Rather, insiders, fans and even teams may be forced to to turn to alternatives like Threads and BlueSky in order to stay up to date with the latest happenings around the league.
In fact, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini and the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport already took to BlueSky to confirm that’s where they plan on breaking news during X’s outage. We’ll update this story with more information as it becomes available.