NBA Inks Three-Year Marketing Partnership With Lenovo

Basketball HOFer Lenny Wilkens (l), Lenovo’s Deepak Advani (c) And NBA's David Stern

The NBA yesterday unveiled a new three-year sponsorship deal with Lenovo during an announcement at the NBA Store in N.Y. Among the marketing tie-ins will be a Lenovo-entitled plus/minus statistic on NBA.com. Lenovo, China’s biggest PC brand, gets an “official PC partner of the NBA” designation and is expected to buy air time on NBA broadcast rights holders, though an NBA spokesperson said those deals were not finalized. Dell held the NBA’s PC rights from ’02 through last season. As was the case with Dell, Lenovo will have branded courtside computers at NBA games responsible for tracking in-game statistics (Terry Lefton, THE DAILY). NBA Commissioner David Stern said, “We’ve been very much looking for a technology partner on a global scale that wants to very much use the NBA’s brand equity on a global scale.” Endpoint Technologies Associates President Roger Kay noted that Lenovo “cannot afford the national campaigns of Dell or HP and thus has focused on sponsoring sporting events such as the upcoming Beijing Olympics.” But Kay added that “unlike that brief window of publicity, ... the NBA can give Lenovo a platform every season” (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 10/24). The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Jane Spencer notes Lenovo’s other sports marketing efforts have included a campaign around the ’06 World Cup featuring FC Barcelona and Brazil MF Ronaldinho (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/24).