Perhaps I'm late on this, but I just noticed today while reading an article on Dirk Nowitzki. The article page had an unfamiliar skin and navigation. In fact the url began with "espn.go.com/dallas/story...". So the curious cat and ex-espn employee that I am, I hunted down the parent page for that article typing in just "espn.go.com/dallas/" and voila! What I saw was what seemed like a localized front-page for Dallas fans. After more hunting and typing more cities in the url (there was no navigation element that lets you see what cities are available), I also found Boston and Chicago.
This absolutely makes sense for ESPN. For a long time, ESPN.com has tried to create the most visceral experience as possible for the fan. To their credit, they have tried everything from a customized side panel (where users can select
their teams/players/conferences), a community site, myyahoo-style aggregator homepage to a custom feed generator.
I think they did it right this time. Sports is a funny thing. Men are too. Sports is very closely tied to location. 90% of the time you become a fan of the city you live in (or live close to). For example, if you live in Boston (Baahston), chances are you will be a fan of a sports team in Boston. Or if you live in Stamford, Connecticut, (a tweener city) you will likely piggy-back on the Yankees or Red Sox depending on which way you swing (not in that sense). And finally, men or people rather, are downright LAZY. Unless you are a geek like me, or you have real obsessive condition tendencies, then you are highly unlikely to spend the 5 minutes to "customize" anything on a website.
For ESPN to offer these localized versions of their web content is a certified win. Unlike the Custom Preference Side Panel offered on the site a few years ago or the Customizable RSS Module on the front page currently, the new localized pages are fit for a fan designed for where they live and 90% of the time, that pre-fitted page will be all he or she needs.
In closing, I predict that ESPN will even geo-target their website and auto-redirect users to their own city. Or allow users to type in [anysport].espn.[anylocation] to generate their own custom pages a la fanz.in.
To see ESPN.com's old designs, you can check out "The Way Back Machine" on web.archive.org or click here.
