Having spent a huge amount of my time (when I should have been running my business) trying to raise money for the Glasgow Worldcon, corporate sponsorship is a sore point with me. There seem to be two primary reasons why Worldcon doesn't get sponsorships:
1. Because fandom is a social group that corporations do not like to be associated with; and
2. Because at a mere 5000 people, Worldcon is much to small for large corporations to bother with.
Things would have been a bit easier in the Bay Area, because people here don't immediately get a bad case of fan cooties immediately you mention the term "science fiction", but size would have been an issue. In the UK there were companies who sold SF product to hard core fans who were not interested in Worldcon because the convention was too small and not open to the general public.
The conclusion that I have come to is that Worldcon won't be able to attract serious sponsors unless it works hard to promote itself, which it can best do by promoting its most valuable asset, the Hugo Awards.
no subject
1. Because fandom is a social group that corporations do not like to be associated with; and
2. Because at a mere 5000 people, Worldcon is much to small for large corporations to bother with.
Things would have been a bit easier in the Bay Area, because people here don't immediately get a bad case of fan cooties immediately you mention the term "science fiction", but size would have been an issue. In the UK there were companies who sold SF product to hard core fans who were not interested in Worldcon because the convention was too small and not open to the general public.
The conclusion that I have come to is that Worldcon won't be able to attract serious sponsors unless it works hard to promote itself, which it can best do by promoting its most valuable asset, the Hugo Awards.
- Cheryl