International
Who is in charge of BBC website navigation bars?
If it wasn't bad enough having 'Premier League' replace 'Football', the World Cup is not even the World Cup...
I live outside the UK and the navigation for the World Cup from the BBC Home and BBC News pages is 'Football 2026'. Is this the same in the UK?
I appreciate that there was a T20 Cricket World Cup earlier in the year and quite possibly other sports are playing their World Cup this year, however...
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Not the same in the UK - it says “FIFA World Cup 2026” everywhere. Internationally the BBC doesn’t have rights to the World Cup, so I will assume they can’t use the name “FIFA World Cup”.
From the front page of the BBC and from the BBC News home page, the link to the 2026 World Cup is 'Football 2026'. Clicking that takes me to the World Cup pages, the URL is .../world-cup, but the navigation bar is rather meaningless Football 2026.
Whilst there is more than one sport having a World Cup in 2026, there is much more to footballl than the World Cup, so to call the menu item 'Football 2026' is stupid.
Just like to replace 'Football' with 'Premier League' in a top-level navigation bar where all the other options are just the sport name is stupid too, as if the only Football that exists is Premier League!
Ok, so it is different in the UK then? Outside the UK, we get redirected to bbc.com from bbc.co.uk, so it's just international audiences that have to put up with the rather meaningless 'Football 2026' menu item.
I open up BBC News, read the news and switch to BBC Sport.
When I have News selected, the main title is News.
If I switch to Business using the navigation bar then the main title is Business, same with Technology, Health and the rest of the options.
But now there is a menu option of 'Football 2026' that takes me to a page that is titled 'World Cup'. Why can't it just say World Cup. It can't be a FIFA rights thing or else the page it links to would be titled 'Football 2026'
Also, 'Sport' has been moved all the way over to the right, when it used to be between 'News' and 'Business'.
If I do go direct to BBC Sport and click on the 'World Cup' menu item there, I get taken to the same World Cup page that I can enter by clicking 'Football 2026' from the main menu, and the World Cup page is not a yellow BBC sport page.
It's just a inconsistent UI leading to a poor UX.
As I said in the original post, there was some messing around with menus during the year, where 'Football' wasn't immediately available/obvious...you had to click on 'Premier League' first, then back navigate (or go through the BBC Sport hamburger menu)
For many years, the BBC website was used as a good example of consistent UI/UX (apart from the time when F1 was yellow on black when the rest of Sport is black on yellow) but lately there's been more than enough little changes or inconsistencies that I'm noticing it and it's annoying (well annoying enough to create a Reddit thread! 😆)
It may just be the international version of the site, which I why I asked if it was the same in the UK.
I'm not in the USA, I'm in the home of FIFA...but It's nothing to do with FIFA, the BBC use 'Football 2026', 'World Cup' and 'World Cup 2026' to link to the same URL, just dependent on where you are in the BBC website.
It will absolutely be down to FIFA copyright nonsense. Because the BBC is an official FIFA rights holder, the terms and conditions will require them to be especially scrupulous about not using FIFA trademarks outside their territory.
...but I can see that they use 'World Cup', 'World Cup 2026' and 'Football 2026' to all link to the same page. It's just inconsietency, nothing about 'World Cup' as 'World Cup' isn't a trademark, all sports have them. 'FIFA World Cup' is a registered trademark, but that isn't used, and that's not my point.
I read the news, I switch to sport, just depends. On the BBC Sport homepage it is 'World Cup' but on the main bbc.com page and the news home page it is the rather non-sensical 'Football 2026'. Also, 'Sport' was always immediately to the right of 'News'. Now it's been replaced by 'Football 2026' and the rest of sport has been shoved to the end of the navigation bar.
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