Virgin America Gets Feet Wet with AVP

The AVP Pro Beach Volleyball has signed Virgin America as presenting sponsor of the Bud Light Hermosa Beach Open scheduled for August 6th-9th and aired on Universal Sports/NBC. The deal is for this year's event only. An official announcement is planned for tomorrow. Other presenting sponsors of AVP events include Bud Light, Malibu Rum, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Riverside Conventions & Visitors Bureau, Johnsonville and Warehouse Pool.

On the heels of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the AVP Tour has made an aggressive PR push to expand the sport to new markets and a wider broadcast audience. Just last week, the AVP announced a new four-year contract to retain top-ranked athletes such as Kerri Walsh, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser.

In Virgin America's brief two year history, the company has employed a variety of primarily California-based sponsorship opportunities including Sunset Music Strip Festival and the San Francisco Giants. To support in-flight entertainment, Virgin America has also brokered cutting edge media and content partnerships with such properties as HBO and the Sundance Channel. Last summer, Virgin teamed up with HBO to launch the airline's new non-stop New York-Las Vegas flights with "Entourage Class" which included in-flight sneak peeks of Entourage Season 5, HBO content fleetwide and a co-branded airplane called "Entourage Air."

Virgin America is the first airline to offer in-flight internet service on every flight and hosts the largest in-flight entertainment library in the domestic skies via its touch-screen Red™ seatback system. To date, Virgin America has flown more than 4.5 million guests since its inaugural flights in August 2007.