AT&T sues NASCAR for sponsorship rights
When you're a big telecom outfit and you don't get your way with sponsoring certain events, better bring out the hankies when you start whining. That's just what AT&T did in a recent tiff with NASCAR, after racing officials refused to slap the AT&T logo on Jeff Burton's car. The Number 31 car already had the Cingular logo on it, but as AT&T eradicates all traces of that brand, it apparently wanted the AT&T logo instead (understandable, we suppose). The beef, though, comes from NASCAR's current sponsorship deal with Nextel for the Nextel Cup; with AT&T calling the logo placement an "integral part'' of the its brand name change, NASCAR is prohibiting the company's ability to "attract new customers and retain existing ones.'' Let us see here: logo change equals automatic new customers... sounds pretty logical to us.
