• by Karl Greenberg , July 15, 2008

AT&T is joining a raft of other companies as official sponsor of the Beijing-bound USA Basketball Men's Senior National Team.

The deal has AT&T giving its customers USA Basketball team content, news and the like via the Web and mobile video-on-demand content. AT&T will promote its products and services through USA Basketball-themed marketing materials.

AT&T has posted documentary footage on team selection, training camp, game highlights, interviews and vignettes on a just-launched co-branded Web site at ATTBlueRoom.com and to AT&T 3G wireless handsets, and on AT&T Team USA On Demand.

The telecom is also launching a "USA Basketball Communicator," a widget that can be had at the Blue Room Web site or USABasketball.com, that feeds USA Basketball news, information, and schedules.

ESPN and ESPN2 are scheduled to broadcast the USA Basketball Exhibition Games in Las Vegas and China. AT&T's exposure during the broadcast will be rotational signage in all five exhibition games, per a spokesperson of the National Basketball Association, from whose teams the Team USA players are culled.

According to a spokesperson at the Omnicom sports marketing agency The Marketing Arm, which brokered the deal for AT&T, the company has "a significant ad buy" on NBC during the games. MediaEdge handled the buy.

He says the big viewer sports are swimming, track and field, gymnastics, diving and beach volleyball. "Of those, swimming is usually No. 1, with track and field and gymnastics battling for second."

The NBA spokesperson says AT&T last sponsored the team in 1996. The team has 15 other sponsors for the Beijing games, including General Motors, Toyota, State Farm, McDonald's, Korean Air, EA Sports and Coke. Johnson & Johnson and 24 Hour Fitness are new sponsors.