With the NBA playoffs as a backdrop, AT&T unveiled an automated 20-foot basketball in Los Angeles this weekend that disseminated autographed basketballs, game tickets and cash.
Located at The Grove in L.A., AT&T’s engineers produced an oversized tech-centric basketball that existing AT&T customers could activate through a QR code on their mobile phones. As a way to use sports to reward its current customers, the basketball would, like a gumball machine, drop NBA prizes down a chute at random.
"The process is just simply a release mechanism," Jeni Bell, AT&T’s SVP of Wireless Product Marketing, told SBJ. "And since its basketball, it only takes about 30 seconds, spiraling down through this illuminated hoop to the customers arms."
The prizes included five signed NBA basketballs by Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers; NBA playoff tickets; NBA merchandise; limited edition color-coded game basketballs; and $5,000 cash prizes for special winners of a 5G branded basketball.
The event was planned in conjunction with the NBA and is AT&T’s second recent sports technology integration. In January at Miami-Dade Arena — and now heading into the playoffs — AT&T combined AI and fiber optics to produce kinetic renderings of Miami Heat player movement and shot charts, known as Connected Canvas.
