Posts Tagged ‘ESPN’

The Bastardization of the Customer Experience

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If you have read any of my previous posts, you know that I am a huge sports fan.  As such, I have a tendency to post about ESPN a lot.  As they are the self-proclaimed world-wide leader in sports, its kind of hard not too.  BTW, “world-wide” is a bit much, as no one in Europe watches ESPN and last time I checked they are a big part of the world.

This morning I went to the site as I always do and went to look for the headlines.  Of late I have been disappointed that this section had been shrinking and I was only getting a small amount of them.  Here is what it looks like today:

espn_no-headlines1

So when the page loads I get absolutely zero headlines.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Nada.  In other words, I get the same amount of news headlines as the Calgary Flames get second round home games (there, I built the one jab in that I said I would in the CBC radio interview.)  I have to scroll down the page to get the information I want.

As loyal ESPN.com user, I’m pissed.  They have continually bastardized their site in an effort to make more room for ads and thus drive more ad sales.  I keep coming back because even because the content they have is second to none.  This last move, however, is a tough pill to swallow.

Now, to their defense, if you do scroll down you get 15 top headlines.  That is three times the amount you got before.  Also, it is possible that the Mac ad running their now is only temporary and they will go back to the old format.

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ESPNChicago Treats Site Like The Second City

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It’s not every day that Chris Berman is talking about Chicago on ESPN.com.  They only roll his old, green sport-coated Nutri-System frame out there for the really big gigs.  It’s also not every day that you want to see Chris Berman talking.  He has a history of some profanity laced tirades., probably in the middle of the Nutri-System stretch.   But all that changes with the launch this week of ESPNChicago.com.


I was excited that Bristol chose Chicago as the launch city instead of NY or Boston.  But having worked a bit with ESPN, I know that any redesign work they do to the site is driven by one thing and one thing only – ad revenue.  The architecture of the site, the overall navigation and the placement of ad units are all built in a way to maximize those ad dollars, not, as they say, the “fan” experience.  Stub Hub seems to agree.

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