I think you'll find that this coming New Year's free travel will be sponsored by Nat West bank.
Burger King's Cross
Starbuckhurst Hill
Notting Hill Gate Gourmet
Tesco Red Leicester Square
Old Spice Street
It'll never work will it?
It seems to work at Arsenal. The ticket barriers are always open on matchdays.
The Man United (YUK) stadium is already been named McTrafford by other fans lol. Euhm. The sponsorship would never effect the original names of the stations, as I think the names are world brands themselfs.
Maybe if Pret-a-manger, Nero or some other coffee place would have a little shop in every station, than you can get the idea worked out well 
Interestingly the KL Monorail in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, already does have sponsored stations. The buildings are covered in just the logo of the company, and the drivers have to announce the full name of the station, so:
"Bukit Nanas - New Straits Times"
"Bukit Bintang - Coca Cola"
"Raja Chulan - ING"
however the monorail costs nothing, literally, so am I fussed? not really. But for the Tube? Maybe not!
What happens when the company sponsoring the station goes bust?
Who is going to pay for the hassle of changing all the places the station name appears to another station name without the sponsor in it?
Considering the cost of updating all the maps, station signs etc etc I can't see anyone wanting to pay for it.
7Up (Seven Sisters)
Swiss Re Cottage
Marble Golden Arches
Nat West Brompton (and there's more)
Em-Bank of Scotland-ment
White and Mackays City
Shepherds Bushmills
Arnotts Grove
Liverpool FC Street
Old Holborn
Alliance and Leicester Square
Caledonian MacBrayne Road
Whopper (Wapping)
Elephant and Castlemaine XXXX
Brooke/Basildon/James Bond Street
Red-Bull-bridge
Nat Westminster
CockFosters
Kingsmill Cross
e-Bayswater
Green-King-ford
Park Royal Bank of Scotland
Twix-ton (ahem)
Canada Dry Water
Angel Delight
Canon Street (subtle)
Deb-enhams-den
SnaresBrook(e) Bond
Canary Wharfdale
Harry Potters Bar (cheating, I know)
Colin-Powell-dale
Claire Rayners Lane
David Ickenham
Hampstead Heath Ledger
Russell Grant Square
Graham Goodge Street
Nigel Tufnell Park
Whoops, wandered off topic a bit.
Vauxhall, Bank, Grange Hill, Canons Park and Paddington are already sponsored, obviously.
And Wimbledon would have to be called "The All England Lawn Tennis Club Championships in assosciation with Flora" Trouble is that the train would have piled into the barriers by the time the driver had said "The next station is..."
I can see that both Neil and Jon are having fun with the sponsored station names 
Others most welcome!
Sports stadiums all over America have become sponsored by coporations - ticket prices have not gone down.
Over on Londonist they confirm that Ken will be suspsending the congestion charge from the 24th December to 2nd January as a nice little Xmas gift.
For Ian - I don't know what they do on weekdays, but when Brentford are playing home, you never see a ticket inspector on a SWT from either Waterloo or Clapham Junction. (Clapham Junction included for teams like Bournemouth.)
Hmmm... me thinks Jon has WAY to much time on his hands *L*
I'm very pleased about the congestion charge for christmas, as for once I will be driving that week (Mum is on holiday so lending me her car), and driving to work (and even paying congestion charge) is cheaper than parking it outside my flat all day!
I'm not against the sponsoring thing.. Changing station names would be a little too wierd, and I don't expect fares to go down.. But if it meant they had more money to invest in improvements, I'd be all for it.
i'm all for the sponsoring thing, as long as it would either reduce ticket prices, or directly go towards making the Tube better.
Oh, almost all formerly public facilities in the US are now corporate named. All the stadiums and sports parks are. The monorail in Las Vegas has named stations. Our buses and monorail trains are wrapped in advertising. Get rid of those grey trains! Go corporate red (or yellow, or green, or whatever)
Not sure if it counts as coporate sponsorship, but I had a thought when Ian mentioned Arsenal station earlier on. This station was originally called Gillespie Road (the tiling on the platform still proudly bears the name), but was changed to Arsenal when the football team moved to north London from Woolwich. I’m not well versed enough in Underground history to know if Arsenal FC got a freebie in the renaming process, but I wonder how much Chelsea FC would be willing to pay for the renaming of Fulham Broadway? Or what price West Ham FC would put on having the station nearest to the ground called West Ham?
Marc - much as I'm not a major footie fan, I actually think that's a great idea to get the clubs to sponsor the station name. Firstly it's really confusing to poor football fans who might inadvertantly go to the wrong station. (God forbid)
Secondly I bet TfL could make pots of money out of getting a football team to sponsor a station name. Hasn't the Russian guy who manages Chelsea got tons of money? £7.2 billion - surely some of that could go towards the renaming of the station.
Joeinvegas - we do occaisionally have non grey tubes, the problem is the companies and organisations that sponsor them have really garish colours
Yellow pages train
Yellow pages seats
2012 Olympic Bid train and seats and our council tax paid for the last ones incidentally 
Ow my eyes, my eyes
I tell you, it would be weird changing trains at Greeg's the Bakers Street.
I still can't believe that our council taxes were being used to replace seat covers with crappy London 2012 ones. I'm willing to bet that there's quite a few of them in 2012 as well (just different from those ones).
They already do the sponsorship thing in Mainz, on their tramway/bus system (admittedly, easier to implement than the tube)
"Nächste Haltestelle: Kentucky Fried Chicken"
To Gabby McAllister, also on weekdays when Brentford play (like tonight) they still check tickets if they feel like it.
And there's no parking space within a 3 mile radius of the stadium. I know, I live 1 street away
To Carina - Brentford weren't playing last night. Well, the youth team were. But many people (including myself) didn't bother going - the attendance (35
speaks for itself.
The full team weren't playing last night, 'cos it was the LDV Vans Trophy last night, and we were knocked out by Oxford in the first round.
King's Cross and Blackwell
(S)Loans.co.uk Square
Tower Gateway PC's
Stam Ford Brook
Maxwell House
Nat Westminster
Oh, someone stop me PLEASE...
In reality, 'sponsorship' covers a small proportion of the cost of all-night running.
Get sponsorship will deliver some benefit, but won't pay for the costs of operating the Tube.
Rob.
I'm not saying it will pay for the total costs fo the Tube but it certainly pays for a quite large amount and if more sponsorship were introduced in ways that the public could benefit from, we might find a lot more of the Tube's operations are partially subsidised.
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