I'd love to know why they needed a custom contract in the first place. My company doesn't have a "deal" with Twitter but we still post there.
I suspect it has to do with the permission to share highlights from the match in their official accounts. Probably those videos belong to the broadcasters and not to the teams themselves. One of the links from the article [1] says that the agreement provides X users with highlights such as touchdowns.
This does not mean that not being able to create an account on a different network is a dumb restriction, even if it's for sharing news or pictures of the team on special days and not videos from the games.
[1] https://deadline.com/2024/04/nfl-x-twitter-renew-content-par...
No one is afraid here, they are just businessmen doing business.
Buy why? What control do they need beyond normal copyright? And what does the NFL gain from not being able to reach tens of millions of Bluesky users?
Money. Content partners pay to have NFL content on their platforms, NFL content is highly valuable, so the NFL doesn't want anyone else to monetize it without the NFL getting their cut.
That is a lot of words to just say: money.
https://deadline.com/2024/04/nfl-x-twitter-renew-content-par...