New ESPN website: a little bit of everything, a whole lot of nothing?

The other day, Newsvine co-founder and former ABC/Disney/ESPN employee Mike Davidson posted a link to the new homepage design for ESPN.com, opening conversation about the quality of the design.

I had just noticed the newly-redesigned ESPN a few minutes before I checked Mike's post, and to say the least, I was not happy. Most people aren't immediately pleased when one of their favorite sites undergoes a complete overhaul, so I was happy to read many of the commenters on Mike's post agreed with my sentiments. As I stated in my comment on the post:

It's way too cluttered- for the first time user, it's insanely overwhemling and offputting. For the daily visitor, it's too chocked full of options- just finding my favorite slices will be challenging, not to mention, an unecessarily ugly venture...There are way too many moving, flashing, rotating pieces. It's distracting to say the least, frustratingly unusable at worst...Organization- Yikes. There's no grouping, no division between content and services (such as video or MyESPN), poor division between sports, and a couple sports of borderline confusion between content and advertising.

Overall, I'm extremely disappointed with this design, especially considering how much better the previous one was.

I won't rehash those points again here, but I want to add another point that I think might be the most signifigant warning sign yet for the negative direction that ESPN's website is fading off into.

First off, let's make this clear: ESPN is one of the most powerful brands right now across any media. That power allows incredible reach to try new things, but it can also breed arrogance and complacency for a brand to forget what made it great in the first place. The single best chance for any competitor to rise up and snatch some of ESPN's share, at least on the web, is if ESPN starts to get dilluted- and that's exactly what I see happening on their new homepage right now.

Take a look at the staggering number of competing sub-brands at play on the new site. First, you've got their newish membership service, MyESPN, that dominates the top right of the site with customized scores and news.

Then, you've got ESPN Mobile, their expensive, propietary service that delivers scores news and video to their own branded phones.

Also competing for your time (and money) as part of their online experience is their Insider Network, a series of pay-only articles and blog posts.

Next is Page2, the website's "irreverent" commentary section. Following that is the ridiculously named Page3, which is apparently the hipper, edgier version of the hip and edgy Page2. This branding scheme reminds me of the arms race currently underway in the men's razor sector. You've got 3 blades, 4 blades, 5 blades, and on and on. So what's next? Page4? And where will it end? Will Page125 be a few months down the road?

All of these web-centric sub-brands also have to compete for space on the homepage with ESPN's other myriad services such as radio, magazine, and the networks- including 2, Classic, and News.

As if all those weren't enough, I'm not even mentioning the site's 'SportsNation' and 'SportsCentury' areas.

Are you exhausted yet? If you're not, just imagine the experience of visiting a homepage that demands space for this seemingly endless list of sub-brands when all you want to do is find a score or a game recap.

It all adds up to a dangerous emerging trend brought further home by the new design: ESPN.com is quickly following in the footsteps of MTV's transformation years ago. A whole lot of clutter and trash, and not very much music, may have worked out for MTV. But it's not a wise strategy for a brand empire that may discover all too late that on the web, your brand is only as powerful as your weakest feature.

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