1. I punched ESPN.com into my browser. 2. I'm greeted by the most confusing interstitial ad I've seen in a while. I did not like how it messed with the reality of what I thought I was looking at. 3. Then I got a popup. 4. Then the new site loaded incredibly slowly and crashed my browser.
ESPN is a huge site. According to Alexa, it's #17 in the U.S. and #68 worldwide. It's a HUGE site, obviously.
So, why does espn.com redirect to espn.go.com?
My first thought would be SEO/SEM. But there are countless ways to keep SEO/SEM when you change domains, and presumably Disney has the resources and manpower to make something like this happen.
They promote it as espn.com, so why, after 15+ years, do they still redirect to a subdomain?
Today I attempted to document all the domains where my Disney account is used so that my browser would autofill the correct credentials when I visit a Disney-owned site. After going down the rabbit hole, I ended up with a total of 31 second-level domains[0]:
It's likely an undercount, and doesn't include the untold subdomains. (go.com alone has thousands of subdomains in CT logs.)
Wouldn't Disney be better served by using something like OIDC on a single domain? I see several downsides to their current approach. First, it's confusing to users when their saved credentials don't autofill because they created the account on a different site. Second, Disney can't use newer, more secure authentication like passkeys/WebAuthn because those are tied to a single domain. Finally, having the same credentials work on a bunch of seemingly-unconnected sites is a phisher's dream. If Disney's user base is accustomed to entering their credentials all around the web, why would they hesitate to enter it on a fake ABC affiliate site?
[0] https://my.disneyaccount.com lists most of the sites
Major sites like espn.com and foxsports.com are ugly and too busy for me. Minor sites I've come across are similar.
What's the reason for this? Is it just me? Does the nature of their content force them to present information this way? Are there other knowledge areas with similar requirements to which I can compare them?
2. I'm greeted by the most confusing interstitial ad I've seen in a while. I did not like how it messed with the reality of what I thought I was looking at.
3. Then I got a popup.
4. Then the new site loaded incredibly slowly and crashed my browser.
Won't be going back there for a while.