One would think they could argue along the lines of anti-competitive.

Of course, I've always wondered what localized value Orange got out their banners at Indy. Although I guess that the world wide audience was a little more than the 120,000 people at the track.

OTOH, I haven't watch a NASCAR race in 3 or 4 years. Even with JPM racing.

Does anyone really give a damn?

I don't watch NASCAR but it seems a bit disturbing that anyone can make a deal to exclude competitors, not through filling supply lines as a market preferred source, but just by saying that they can't make any other deals with the competition.

It makes me wonder why they are choosing the grandfather angle though. Maybe it's easier to get a quick decision on that one.

This only applies to the NASCAR Sprint Series of racing. AT&T has already changed its logo in the (Anheuser) Busch Series and the (Sears) Craftsman Series (trucks), and if they ran a car they could do the same for the Weekly Racing Series, the Touring Series, and the Elite or Grand National Divisions.

They're just bitchin' because they couldn't outbid Sprint/Nextel for the rights to be THE premium sponsor for the 2008 racing season for what used to be the Winston Cup Series (changed to the Nextel Cup Series in 2004). The poor company can't piggyback on all of Sprint's advertising ... boohoo.

I mean ... why bother with all of this time-consuming court doggerel? It's only a $700m-for-one-year deal. Just outbid them for 2009 and force the fans to buy a whole lot more gear with yet another Series logo!

If I paid for a tiny ad on a NASCAR racer's car, I can get a tax break and get some exposure. Most of you out there probably don't watch NASCAR, but the drivers and the announcers are always saying the big company name. For instance (pretend I am speaking in a Southern accent), a driver will say "At around lap 9, I saw the Wal-Mart Chevy coming up on my right, but I knew my Cingular Ford would have enough the inside track so I won't worried." Or something like that. Plus, the racers will wear the sponser's logo 24-7. And in the case of NASCAR, fans of the driver are usually loyal to their brand. I don't watch NASCAR, but I do know that much. However, I do like watching some of the neat cameras angles they get, they have cameras behind and in front of the car, all with the corporate logo in plain sight.

This is a big deal, because now AT&T will have to find some other thing to plaster their logo on, or pay a lot more tax.

Ok, don't watch the wierd hick racing stuff...but why shouldn't they be able to advertise. It's like AMD and Intel arguing over "you can't sponsor Ferrari as you have an Intel sticker" in F1. It's all just bloody silly.

Seems like the entire worlds run by lawyers, cival servants who make shite up to give themselves something to do and libertarians. Things would be a shedload better if we rounded the lot of them up, and glued them to a runway at Heathrow and "claimed" they wondered onto the track from the hippy camp :P

"If I paid for a tiny ad on a NASCAR racer's car"

I think it's a wee bitty biger than a tiny ad.

http://www.bvdrangs.com/images/nascar/Cingular31Nw.jpg

As Sprint Nextel say they can't have an AT&T logo on the car, can they put a Sprint Nextel logo on it, with the words "are Shit" underneath?

"As Sprint Nextel say they can't have an AT&T logo on the car, can they put a Sprint Nextel logo on it, with the words "are Shit" underneath?"

No, that wouldn't pass the FCC censors, nor would it likely fly well in a libel suit.

"Frack Sprint" would work. It's not profanity, but almost everybody would know exactly what they were saying. You know what v1a6ra is in those spam that you likely don't see because you have better spam filters that the average <your countrymen>.

When I worked for Paranet, which was bought by Sprint, most of us had AT&T (which became Cingular and is now AT&T) as Sprint didn't work in our offices. Shortly after I left, Sprint required everybody to have a Sprint phone, but at least they paid for them.

A few years later, Sprint sold "Paranet" to the guys they bought it from, at about 30% what they paid for it.

... a big "I don't Sprint!" logo in ATT blue?

NASCAR races are 200-, 400-, 500-milers, aren't they? That's not a sprint race and, as the saying goes: "It isn't slander if it's true".

Writing from the part of the US where NASCAR has actively tried to kill its own local series, I feel compelled to point out that there are other stock car sanctioning bodies in the US-- ARCA, ASA, and Pro Cup spring to mind, and not being a huge fan of stock cars myself, I've probably missed others.