SAN FRANCISCO—Zed will help the National Basketball Association (NBA) get more of its content into the hands of mobile phone users. The deal includes distribution in North America as well as Asia and Europe.

The new content will be made available in time for the 2008-09 season and will expand the NBA’s overall mobile reach to more than 20 countries under a multi-year agreement.

Throughout the year, NBA fans will be able to get access to a suite of NBA mobile content, including video highlights, wallpapers for all 30 teams and ringtones. Along with NBA scores, statistics and news, fans eventually will be able to access a series of casual NBA games, create avatars, blog, join community platforms and develop user-generated content.

The challenge for content providers is the myriad channels, handsets, operating systems and other factors they have to deal with in order to get their content into the mobile space in a big way. Zed can step in and help them with a lot of those challenges, according to Zed U.S. CEO Brian Casazza, similar to what Zed is doing with the NBA.

Zed’s on-deck expertise comes primarily from the 9Squared side of the house, which merged with Zed over a year ago, while Zed’s expertise prior to the acquisition traditionally has been in the off-deck arena.