When executives at the paint company Valspar Corp. decided nearly a year ago they wanted to focus heavily on a new line of paints geared toward homeowners, they went shopping for a sporting event to sponsor. The company weighed everything from the Super Bowl to college basketball’s March Madness before deciding the U.S. Open would be the venue for their multimillion-dollar branding campaign.

Paint and tennis might not sound like the perfect match, but the 200-year-old Minneapolis-based paint and coating company wanted to embark on a campaign that appealed to both men and women — as does tennis — while also capitalizing on the late summer boom when painting season is at its peak, Valspar’s marketing director, Scot Karstens, said.

Thus, the Valspar name will be on view at the U.S. Open this year. There will be television advertisements, signs dotting the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, a branded booth at the stadium, and even a fan tennis challenge that will culminate with the winner playing in a “tennis event” with one of the stars.

“We wanted to make sure we had visibility,” Mr. Karstens said. “We found out, on average, a person at the event spends about seven hours per visit, so we wanted to make sure we have a presence on site.”

When the U.S. Open kicks off today, tennis is not going to be all that is taking place. The two-week spectacle is a favorite of companies that spend millions to brand their products, and to wine and dine clients, all while taking advantage of being in New York City during the summer.

“What I honestly believe is they are getting to partner with one of the world’s five biggest sporting events,” a U.S. Tennis Association spokesman, Chris Widmaier, said. “You can handle a lot of different clients. It’s not like the Super Bowl where it’s one day, fly in and fly out. You have 14 consecutive nights.”

With more than half a million people expected to attend matches and millions more tuning in to watch the U.S. Open championships on CBS, the USTA will receive a little more than $55 million in sponsorship for this year’s event — up slightly from the $50 million it received last year. Sponsorships can include rights to use the U.S. Open name, which can cost between $2 million and $10 million, and purchases of airtime on CBS.

There are a number of returning sponsors this year. IBM will have a technical team providing all of the information technology for the event and managing the U.S Open Web site. Lexus is providing a fleet of cars to shuttle athletes during their stay in New York. Continental Airlines is the official carrier for the event.

Another newcomer this year, Grey Goose vodka, will have a bar near the food pavilion.

The U.S. Open is nowhere nearly as successful from an economic standpoint as the NCAA or the NFL, which generate more than $1 billion in sponsorships, but as a major American sporting event, it’s an attractive vehicle for companies to flaunt their brand name, a marketing consultant and professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Tim Calkins, said.

Large sporting events aren’t necessarily the right fit for all businesses, Mr. Calkins said. He pointed to companies such as the dotcoms, which in the late 1990s and early 2000s spent heavily on Super Bowl sponsorship, only to later admit the event was not the best vehicle to sell their names.

Companies increasingly look at events such as the U.S. Open to reward customers as well.

JP Morgan Chase, the event’s lead sponsor, has been running a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that gives customers an opportunity to win pairs of the 8,000 tickets it has for the event. It’s double the number of tickets JP Morgan gave away last year. The company has spent its entire third-quarter advertising budget on the promotion, company officials said in a press release.

American Express, a U.S. Open sponsor for 14 years, also sponsors the TriBeCa Film Festival, and major golfing events.

Aside from traditional branding benefits — advertising campaigns featuring tennis stars such as Venus Williams, whose face will be plastered on 7 trains, among other highly trafficked areas — American Express is using its investment to reward existing card members who attend the event. As it has in past years, the company set up viewing areas in Madison Square Park and Rockefeller Center for cardholders who won’t be at the event. On September 6, American Express has teamed up with the online dating site Match.com to allow members of both sexes to meet in Madison Square Park for a “tennis lovers’ night,” the company’s director of global sponsorship marketing, Jessica Igoe, said.

At the U.S. Open, American Express will be loaning customers satellite televisions to watch matches in other arenas alongside the one they are attending. The 2,000 touch-screen TVs are roughly the size of a handheld video game console and feature new technology known as “Wise-DV,” Ms. Igoe said.

“It’s a focus on the card member,” she said. “Thank you for being one and this is what you get.”