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Eleven of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball are currently not verified on Twitter, as of the time of this writing. This comes just a day after Twitter removed all of the “legacy” blue checkmarks at the behest of embattled CEO Elon Musk.
As of Friday, April 21, over 33% of the teams in MLB are not verified on Twitter, with those teams being the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Guardians, New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins, Oakland A’s, St. Louis Cardinals, and Toronto Blue Jays.
There are 19 teams that are currently verified with the gold checkmarks, which, according to Twitter, means that “the account is an official business account through Twitter Verified Organizations.”
The MLB accounts that currently have gold checks are the Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, New York Yankees, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers, and Washington Nationals.
MLB isn’t the only professional sports league seeing teams opting to not participate in Twitter’s Business program, as 10 of its 30 teams — Detroit Pistons, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings, OKC Thunder, Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, Atalanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers, Brooklyn Nets — are currently without any kind of check.
To make matters even more confusing, three NBA teams — the Dallas Mavericks, Portland Trailblazers, and Detroit Pistons — still have blue checkmarks, which are meant to be for individuals.
Over in the NFL, every single franchise is verified, albeit there is a mix of gold and blue checkmarks.
Given Twitter’s description of the gold checkmark package for official business accounts, it appears as though the 11 MLB teams and 10 NBA teams without it are simply choosing not to pay Twitter for a feature that was previously free to them, which seems to be the case across the board.
According to reports from TechCrunch and data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Twitter Blue only earned the company $11 million in mobile subscriptions during its first three months.
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