AT&T will kick off its first golf event of the season promoting their star athlete, world No. 1 Jordan Spieth. The Dallas-based company will celebrate its sponsorship with Spieth and his historic 2015 with the release of Jordan Spieth bobbleheads at this week's AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
The first 8,000 fans to arrive on Saturday will receive a voucher for a Spieth bobblehead. They also can have their picture taken, posing as the "I" in giant SP_ETH letters.
Fans can also participate in "It Can Wait" virtually reality experience at the AT&T Digital Clubhouse. The advertising campaign featuring Spieth warns of the dangers of texting while driving.
Spieth bobbleheads have been a big hit— to golf fans and collectors. When he returned to the 2014 John Deere Classic, where he won his first Tour event at age 19, tournament organizers paid homage with a giveaway of 200 Spieth bobbleheads. Some of the figurines, which were distributed almost exclusively to children, found their way onto eBay, selling for as much as $500. A year later, during the 2015 John Deere in September, one of the seven-inch dolls had an asking price of 799.99. Spieth picked up his fourth win of the season that week.
"No individual golfer has had a bobblehead sell for anywhere near what Spieth's have been selling for," Phil Skar, a bobblehead aficionado from Milwaukee, told Golf.com.
Before Spieth's John Deere bobblehead debut, golf was relatively slow to embrace the bobblehead. An Arnold Palmer bobblehead sold at auction in 2013 for $179.99, and a Fuzzy Zoeller one brought $159.95 in 2012. In 2009, after Tiger Woods' infamous Escalade accident, a "Tame the Tiger" doll appeared, dressed in a red shirt and holding a Florida license plate, a golf club slamming across his bobble head.
On Sunday night, eBay listed 2,021 Spieth items for sale but no bobbleheads. That should change when some of the 8,000 AT&T figurines start finding their way to eBay.
AT&T has a longstanding relationship with golf and the PGA Tour. This marks the company's 31st year as title sponsor of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and second as title sponsor of the AT&T Byron Nelson. The Nelson is set for May 19-22 at the TPC Four Seasons at Las Colinas.
AT&T first celebrated Spieth's 2015 season, which included two major titles, the FedEx Cup and PGA Tour Player of the Year, by launching a national ad campaign on Nov. 5 with a giant golf-ball mosaic in downtown Dallas. The 30-second commercial started by focusing on one of the mosaic's 24,152 golf balls and slowly zoomed out to reveal Spieth's larger-than-life image.