From what I've read, Air Canada was interested in renewing the Naming rights but not at the amount that MLSE wanted. The Scotiabank deal is $40M a year compared to the Air Canada deal which was $4M a year. So, while the abbreviation of the name may have played a part in the evaluation of what Air Canada felt the naming rights were worth, I suspect that the escalation in MLSE's asking price played a much bigger role.I heard on the radio the other day - the explanation why modern arena have such boring corporate names.
Let's take Alberta just because I know it. The arena in Edmonton's official name is Rogers Place.
Extremely boring. But there's no way to really shorten it - you can't call it "the Place" (place? what place?). You can't call it Rogers when there's already a Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
Contrast though to Calgary. The arena there is named the Scotiabank Saddledome. Problem is - everyone just calls it the Saddledome (it's shaped like a saddle after all). The sponsor gets way less bang for their buck.
But Calgary is getting a new arena. The name is going to be Scotia Place. So yet another really boring name - but one you can't really shorten. The name sponsor wins again, at the expense of an interesting name.
Apparently that was also an issue in Toronto. The arena was called the Air Canada Centre - which wasn't all that original either, but everyone just abbreviated it to ACC. Apparently Air Canada hated that. So since 2018 it's now Scotiabank Arena.