Lance appeals to tennieboppers who don't yet have fantastic purchasing power, or a great deal of free time to watch 8 different t.v. episodes about Lance's spacecapades. Lori, on the other hand, appeals to mothers (etcetera) and I've read that the "woman of the house" makes the lion's share of purchasing decisions. That's gotta be of potential interest to sponsors. Lori's also quite bright and charming and is of potential interest to the education-oriented sponsorship pool. In contrast, Lance appeals to those who are all too often merely pretending to seek an education at the beauty contest that is high school nowadays. Lance didn't see fit to finish high school himself, although he did get his GED. I'm not saying that's a strike against Lance as he's done quite well for himself, only that he attracts a different kind of sponsor and viewer than Lori.

Lori astonishingly managed to get bureaucratic NASA to embrace the publicly-funded prizes possibility, by the way. Impressively enough she continues to push for that highly worthwhile reform and thereby give space entrepreneurs hope, as http://www.SpaceProjects.com/prizes documents. I have no financial relationship with Lori and I never have, but I sure do respect her and wish her well.

Meanwhile, I'd not be so eager to give the finger to Jeffrey Manber either. Please keep in mind what NASA and the other jealous bureaucrats put him through:

http://www.SpaceProjects.com/Mir

It's hard not to respect his resilience. Besides which, if there's no competition for Space Adventures then it becomes tougher for Space Adventures to prompt its own employees and affiliates to bring prices down as much as possible so that we can hopefully get to go someday as well.
In my humble opinion, of course...

a DC-residing volunteer editor with NASAWatch.INFO