AT&T Loses Battle To NASCAR; To Remove Logo From Jeff Burton’s Car
Aug 23, 2007
RCRRacing
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a mandate allowing NASCAR to require the removal of AT&T logos from the No. 31 Chevrolet owned by Richard Childress Racing and driven in the Nextel Cup Series by Jeff Burton. Reid Spencer, Sporting News
In a reversal of a lower court’s decision, the 11th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that AT&T doesn’t have the right to sue NASCAR over a sponsorship disagreement.
The upshot: NASCAR is close to being able to require that AT&T logos be stripped from the No. 31 car, which is driven by Jeff Burton. That finding is a big switch from May, when Judge Marvin Shoob of U. S. District Court in Atlanta granted AT&T a preliminary injunction that allowed the company’s logos to appear on the car. SCOTT LEITH, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The dispute arose after NASCAR, the sanctioning body of US stock car racing, decided that it wasn’t going to allow AT&T to replace the Cingular spread-eagled inkblot-man logo on the Number 31 car with AT&T’s death-star logo after AT&T decided to phase out the Cingular brand once it completely bought the wireless carrier.
NASCAR has an exclusive $700m sponsorship deal with Sprint Nextel for its premier race series that prohibits any Sprint Nextel competitor from sponsorships or advertising associated with the premier series. Kevin Fayle, TheRegister
In overruling AT&T’s injunction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concluded that AT&T did not have “standing” to sue NASCAR to enforce the wording of the grandfather clause through which NASCAR allowed RCR to keep its Cingular sponsorship despite the provision in NASCAR’s contract with Sprint/Nextel that prohibited other wireless telecommunications companies, expressly including AT&T, from sponsorship activities in the Cup series. Without “standing”, AT&T’s claim is improper and the court of appeals dismissed it. Chuck Wallace, InsiderRacingNews
