Lately my iMac has started behaving very strangely. When I am playing Minecraft, the game suddenly pauses, and Safari becomes the active app, not only that but the ESPN tab is always in front even if it was not the currently active tab when I switched app to Minecraft. This started a few days ago. I suspect CleanMyMac might be behind this as it also insists becoming my active app when I make a video full screen.
Some background app (or maybe tab running in a browser or maybe an ad on a page in a browser tab) is sending a page-open request to Safari, opening the ESPN tab and raising the browser.
If there’s nothing obvious on your system (e.g. an ESPN app, or browser extension), then I would scan for malware.
Also consider running an ad blocker, if you’re not already doing so, to see if there’s a malicious (or at least annoying and unwanted) script coming through some ad network.
Thanks, I 'll check all those things.