AT&T files motion to have its logo on Burton’s car immediately
Quote selected text Published March 26th, 2007 in NASCAR News
Telecommunications giant AT&T filed a motion Monday, asking that its logo be added to Jeff Burton’s car immediately.
The motion was filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, where the company also filed its lawsuit against NASCAR. A hearing on the motion has not yet been scheduled.
Burton is sponsored by cell phone service provider Cingular. AT&T recently took full ownership of Cingular as part of its recent merger with BellSouth and intends to eliminate the brand name.
AT&T sued NASCAR on March 16 after racing series officials refused to allow AT&T to put its logo on Burton’s car because of NASCAR’s deal with Nextel, which sponsors NASCAR’s top series — the Nextel Cup.
“We must bring this issue to resolution,” John Burbank, vice president of marketing for AT&T, said in a statement. “The season is well under way and so are our rebranding efforts. This filing is a logical next step for us in the process, and one we must pursue so that we can simply move forward with our paint scheme — something our agreement with NASCAR allows us to do.”
NASCAR’s Nextel deal forbids teams that race in the series from signing new sponsorship agreements with competing telecom companies. The deal does contain a provision that allows teams with existing telecom sponsorships — such as Richard Childress Racing, the team Burton drives for — to keep their sponsors.
AT&T officials acknowledge they agreed to a contract with Childress’ team that contains provisions saying Cingular can’t increase the size or placement of its logo on the car and can’t switch its sponsorship to another team. But they say the contract does not contain language preventing a logo change if Cingular is bought out by another company.
NASCAR and Nextel officials declined comment when the lawsuit was filed.
source: AFP/Yahoo
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Sheesh, Nextel if ya can;t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. whats the big deal, singular/at&t or whatever, sponsers need their names seen on their car, thts what keeps the cars running. Hope they rule in At&T favor
Also need to let Robby Gordon put motorola on his car.
The funny thing is Motorola is the brand of cell phones that Nextel uses.
This is interesting. Just legal wrangling and lawyers having their fun. Someone is going to get embarassed. Should be good.
Motorola makes phones for all of the phone companies. Just differett software with the phones to be compatible with the different phone company’s networks. If NASCAR didn’t write rules for corporate buyouts and new marketing strategies for sponsors, well, then they are at fault. Just like the race car specs, if it’s not in the rules is it really cheating? Maybe Nextel needs better lawyers writing their rules!
They are looking at chaning the name to Sprint instead of Nextel, Can they do that since they aren’t letting AT&T? Babies, NASCAR is scared and Nextel SUCKS, I have one I know! but none is better than the other. get over it! Allow them to change I agree with Cathy, if its not in their contract then NASCAR has to defend itself to Nextel on why it didnt get in their contract!
screw nextel and screw nascar. i used to love nascar. now with all this bullshit the only reason i watch it is because im a longtime fan of jeff burton and i like to see how denny hamlin does because we used to race against him here in va. if it werent for those two i woodnt even watch it anymore. go to a saturday nite short track. the racing is better and theres no coporate bullshit goin on there. same deal with sunoco and shell. shell should sue nascar.
Nextel is stupid.
AT&T bought cingular. So it’s the same company, they show the AT&T logo on TV during their sponsor spot, and saw AT&T is the new cingular.
Just wait until Jeff wins a race.
Well the AT&T car was reall good, the guys work hard putting the AT&T car together so that we can get the AT&T car into victory lane here today.
We all know he would say AT&T as many times as he could during the interview.