I’ve got the pot scalded and waiting!! 
I think people may be confusing rebranding a consumer product and renaming a once-a-year event. Many annual events undergo name changes due to sponsor changes. But there is very little in common between re-naming a consumer product and an event. The latter has fewer issues involved.
Re-name/re-brand/change trade dress of Pringles, and you risk confusing your loyal buyers who then (i) may not find your product on the shelf and (ii) may choose another of the 27 similar products on the shelf by mistake thinking it is the new Pringles. Sales and market share plummet. You also have to mount a big campaign to educate your consumer base (i.e., the entire buying public - every person in every market in which you place product) about your new look and name. Super expensive, lots of moving parts, hit to the bottom line guaranteed until you can re-establish your new brand. Same with repeated services like, say, an exterminator.
Re-naming an annual event is different. There aren’t 27 other high-level 3-day events in the Unionville area the second weekend in September. Your relatively small consumer base (people who event at that level AND in that area, and people who like to go watch events) won’t go to the event shelf and mistakenly pick some other Unionville event that weekend. You also don’t rely on them seeing your labeling/trade dress/etc. in order to attract them to your “product” among a group of similar products. You are the only product in town at that time and so your “consumers” quickly understands “same race/same place/new name.”
In fact, a single name change of an annual event is vastly simpler than the serial name changes that go with events like bike races or venues like stadia which are renamed not infrequently and, yet, everyone is able to turn up at the right place to watch baseball.
For a local example, the long-running international cycle race held in Philadelphia went from Core States, to First Union, to Wachovia, and on and on and, guess what? Greg Lamond never turned up at any other international bike race in Philly held on that same weekend each year.
Re-naming products and re-naming venues/events are really different undertakings and conflating the two isn’t useful. I’m a lawyer, like Walker, so I hope I get credit for at least having a nodding acquaintance with this topic. [Which itself isn’t great reasoning. No reason a family law practitioner, for example, should know about the work/expense involved in re-branding anymore than anyone else with an interest in that topic.]
While there is work and expense involved, it is not the same as for product/brand changes. Not understanding those differences isn’t helpful to the discussion.
Oh, and @Marigold has years of experience so let’s please not discount her valuable contribution to the discussion. She has vastly more than a nodding acquaintance with the issues involved. Why her expertise is not given the same weight as others who weighed in on the subject is baffling. If it’s simply b/c she is not supporting the majority view here, that’s not a good reason.