Because it was for the same damn thing. The 'association ' is just how Disney could demand a premium because the of the exclusivity of such a unique opportunity. At the end of the day they were selling exposures... Same as a stadium naming deal. Which is very much alive... Theme parks aren't much different. What is different is there is a lot more competition diluting the value and exclusivity that once existed.
I'm really not sure why you are so testy or what it is you are arguing.
You are talking about very different types of sponsorship.
10M people visited Epcot
last year.
What, 50M a
week watch a NFL game? It's simply an expansion of advertising revenues. No one is under any delusion that the NFL
needs that money to put on the game. Someone is just paying to see that name said during the program and not during the commercial breaks where folks might miss it while relieving themselves of their last beer or nacho order. It's also an advertisers dream because the audience is so targeted.
When it comes to stadium naming, it's often because construction on them is partially publicly funded or at least bonded, and generally building one is actually done at a loss to increase overall revenue/attractiveness of a municipality. This cost is off-set by naming rights, because going from the Fleet Center to the TD Banknorth Garden means someone is saying and advertising their name constantly on tickets, television, etc. (although in that case it's why most of us just refuse to call it anything but the Gah-den even today).
In any case, there is a stark difference between those (largely revolving around professional sports which are so heavily monetized with advertising it's nearly the entire point they exist in their current forms) and Disney claiming they "need" sponsors to fund paid attractions behind it's high dollar admission gates in privately owned parks in a privately owned resort with record profits. That's the excuse given for why WS hasn't had an attraction added in thirty years. It's even a lot different than Walt's Disneyland, which as I'm sure you know, actually
did need the financial help to get built (folks have written books about it).
You can disagree with that, whatever - you are talking about mainly television advertising and civic construction projects. In any case, the entire point was that it isn't nearly as attractive to be a "partner" with the WDC on attractions as it once was, particularly in Epcot which was the mother-lode of sponsorship. Back when EPCOT was EPCOT and not Epcot, it was seen as an elite thing - companies/countries (or tourism boards within) were lining up.
That's no longer the case today - it's no longer a status symbol to be associated with a dated theme park. It was cool and hip thirty-five years ago to be part of Disney's grand EPCOT experiment. Now, being associated with Disney can be seen as much of a liability as it is a benefit (frequent conservative boycotts, image clashes, etc).
And again, the notion of Disney
needing a sponsor in order to build something is absurd from the start, with the single location, untargeted advertising never really having the impact of what a big money sponsorship deals usually entail to begin with. They got away with it for a good long while, but most companies apparently wised up that dumping tens of millions of dollars into capital expenditures of another companies very profitable business didn't really do them any good, and certainty no longer brings the perceived prestige it once did.
