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Originally Posted by Rollerstud98
No I don't think Air Canada Centre is a strong normalized name. Skydome yes, Saddledome yes but Air Canada Centre was always corporate naming rights through and through. If they had changed the Maple Leafs Gardens to Air Canada Centre you know it would have always remained Maple Leaf Gardens. Through the time of the Saddledome having corporate naming rights all and even when it was Olympic Saddledome, people just called it the Saddledome, or dome.
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Staples Center in LA is normalized and it is a corporate name, many folks forget it is corporate actually. Staples was ambitious in going in early for naming rights and has become a mainstay on the building.
20 years of history and the name becomes normalized as it appears in print, on highlights, and is spoken in conversation the same way. Team owners and corporate brands are too short sighted to see this, you have to be in it for the long haul to get any benefits.
Also corporations need to get over themselves and use subsidiary or acronyms for these types of branding, also the need to be are of branding fit to not sound stupid (Smoothie King Arena). Scotiabank would of been fine as "Scotia Centre", "Scotia Arena" it just flows better and isn't clunky to say. People see the logo and best Scots they already know. Air Canada Centre flowed when you said it, mostly because "Canada" acted as a buffer that didn't make it sound strange. Also the shortened form of ACC was great, one of the better abbreviations in pro sports facilities. To the point you could put it on way finding signs with just the arena logo and folks could figure it out.
Also in the age of text messages the abbreviations and shorthands do work and come in handy. Nobody is going to text "meet me at Scotiabank Centre", folks will still message he normalized short hand "I'm at th ACC, meet me gate 5". For SkyDome it is different as everyone knows Rogers owns the team some folks will say "im at SkyDome", or "I'm at Rogers" or ; BMO Field is slowly getting normalized, most folks just call it "BMO", you simply soccer and TFC within the statement you're making and people know what you're talking about.
Overall thought the state of Canada arenas is silly. 6 now names after 3 Corps, I have no idea what suits think this is a good idea. These naming rights do little to actually boost presence for Corps and studies back that up. In saying that the Corps should treat it as a long term investment for community and market exposure with intent of becoming culturally embedded and normalized which IMO is priceless. Staples is culturally embedded in Los Angeles because of the arena name and that has now turned out to be priceless; that all has more value then how many times the name gets plastered on a arena flyover from a blimp in TV.
I'm sure MLSE likes it's money but $20 million a year is peanuts to them. The suits should be more aware to culture and quirks, it's hard to put that into a spreadsheet though so they don't like to do down that road. Nobody is crying about the name change, but I promise if the Leafs won and the Raptors won titles in recent years then a name change would of been met with greater backlash. There does have to be winning memories tied to the building which is why partly people lost their shit over SkyDome changing its name.