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EXPERT REACTION: Alcohol advertising remains prominent in televised sport

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A study of televised sporting events during the summer of 2014–15 found audiences were exposed to alcohol marketing during every event — in some cases for nearly half of the match. The survey of four sports — rugby league, tennis, football and cricket — showed audiences were exposed to between 1.6 and 3.8 alcohol brands per minute. The study authors said that given the association between alcohol marketing and alcohol-related harm, "there is an urgent need for regulation that addresses alcohol marketing through sport". In an accompanying editorial, Australian researchers wrote that growing up with ubiquitous alcohol advertising and sponsorship could lead children to assume that drinking alcohol was "part of being a good New Zealander".

Journal/conference: New Zealand Medical Journal

Organisation/s: University of Otago

Media Release

From: New Zealand Medical Journal

Researchers call for ban on alcohol sponsorship of sport

Watching televised sport means watching advertisements for alcohol, say researchers from the University of Otago, Wellington (UOW).

Associate Professor Louise Signal from the Department of Public Health at UOW says that children should be protected from alcohol marketing by banning alcohol sponsorship of sport.

The study, to be published tomorrow in the NZ Medical Journal, assessed the nature and extent of alcohol sport sponsorship over a summer of televised sport in New Zealand. The researchers analysed five major sporting events televised in the summer of 2014/15, and found that alcohol sponsorship is prevalent in international sport on NZ television.

“Due to alcohol sponsorship of sport, New Zealanders, including children, were exposed to up to 200 ads per hour they watched televised sport, and people watching football and tennis saw alcohol ads for almost half of each game,” says Associate Professor Signal.

Marketing drives alcohol consumption by encouraging drinking. Alcohol causes considerable harm, including violence, injury, mental health problems and cancer. It contributes to over five percent of deaths in New Zealand and costs the country more than $5billion a year.

“More than a third of young New Zealanders ‘binge drink’ (six or more drinks on one occasion), one in five binge drink every week,” Associate Professor Signal says.

“Sport sponsorship bypasses traditional marketing and gets around the current advertising codes,” says Associate Professor Signal. “Children see their sporting heroes linked with alcohol. In New Zealand we have already agreed that alcohol should not be marketed to children by traditional marketing. Why should we allow it with sports sponsorship?”

“Rugby league and cricket watchers were not immune, although cricket fans were protected by the absence of a major alcohol sponsor in the Cricket World Cup,” she says.

The research supports high level advice to government to ban alcohol sponsorship of sport. “The 2014 Ministerial Forum on Alcohol Advertising, chaired by Rugby League legend Graham Lowe, argued for banning alcohol sponsorship in sport. We are still waiting for a Government decision on this advice.”

For the study, the researchers chose matches of popular sports with large audiences:

  • Rugby League 9s test match (rugby league, women, played in Auckland),
  • Australian Open Final (tennis, men, played in Melbourne),
  • Asian Cup Final (football, men, played in Sydney),
  • Football Ferns International friendly (football, women, played in Chicago) and
  • ICC (International Cricket Council) ODI (One Day International) Cricket World Cup Final (cricket, men, played in Melbourne).

“We observed alcohol brands during each of these televised events,” says Tim Chambers, Assistant Research Fellow at the University of Otago, Wellington, currently on a Fulbright Scholarship at Harvard University.

“Audiences were exposed to between 1.6 and 3.8 alcohol brand exposures per minute. Alcohol brands were visible between 42 and 777 times across the games examined. For three out of the five events alcohol brands were visible for almost half of the game,” he says.

“There are many healthy sponsors of sport that could replace alcohol, for example ASB Bank sponsored the ASB Tennis Classic this month. What is needed is the will of both sporting organisations and politicians,” Associate Professor Signal says. “We call upon the government and sporting organisations to support parents to protect their children from alcohol-related harm,” she says.

This summer major televised sports are sponsored by brands including Jacob’s Creek, Woodstock and Heineken.

The World Health Organization also calls for regulation of alcohol sponsorship because of strong evidence of the effectiveness of regulation in reducing alcohol-related harm.

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Expert Reaction

These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.

Professor Sally Casswell, director, Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Massey University

This research provides a timely reminder of the extent to which we allow our children to be exposed to alcohol marketing in the context of watching sporting events. It must be acknowledged this is only a small part of the exposure to alcohol marketing which is rife in many forms of media, including, most insidiously, social media such as Facebook.

However, the focus on sports sponsorship by alcohol brands and retailers is important in a country like ours which is both strongly engaged with sport and suffers from considerable alcohol-related harm. This combination contributed to both the Law Commission (in 2010) and the subsequent, much delayed, Ministerial Forum on Alcohol Advertising and Sponsorship (in 2014) recommending an immediate ban on sponsorship of sport by alcohol industries.

The Ministerial Forum was chaired by ex-Rugby League coach Graham Lowe, who was, last year, reported to be ‘deeply saddened’ by a deafening silence from the government in response to the report. Lowe said what he found most startling during the review was evidence of the "brainwashing" effect exposure to alcohol advertising and sponsorship in sport had on children.

The authors of the New Zealand study examine the arguments commonly made by the vested interests (the representatives of alcohol producers, the advertising industry and the recipients of the bulk of the sponsorship money) and point out experience with banning tobacco sponsorship has shown the way forward for a similar ban on alcohol sponsorship.

The Law Commission’s review and subsequent Select Committee hearings on alcohol legislation provided the opportunity for New Zealanders to express their concern over alcohol marketing, including sponsorship, and they did so in very large numbers. Similarly, surveys have demonstrated high levels of support for restrictions on alcohol marketing. It remains to be seen if this paper, a further contribution to the considerable research literature documenting the extent and effects of exposure of young people to alcohol marketing, will encourage further debate and even, at last, a response from government. 

Last updated: 12 Jan 2017 10:39am
Professor Steve Jackson, School of Physical Education, Sport & Exercise Science, University of Otago

Ultimately this small, but important study confirms the findings of a growing number of research studies both in New Zealand and internationally. In particular, it confirms the findings of larger NZ-based studies including the 2013 commissioned report for the Health Promotion Agency and the recommendations the authors were invited to present to the Ministry of Health forum on the future of alcohol sponsorship of sport in 2015. Moreover, it also confirms more recent research on the topic

In 2011 former PM John Key admitted publicly that NZ has a binge drinking culture but that finding solutions is not easy. He was absolutely right, particularly when the government is unwilling to take bold steps which challenge the alcohol industry and its lobby groups (see Cody & Jackson, 2016).

The fact is that globally about 60 per cent of all alcohol television advertising spend is directed towards sports programming and the alcohol industry continually seeks to either alter the regulations or find ways to operate within the limit rather than the spirit of existing laws and regulations.

Like many other businesses, the global alcohol industry is controlled by a small group of increasingly powerful organisations. The global aspects of this problem are important as multinational companies have increasing levels of power and influence over the regulations and laws within nation-states. For example, consider the fact that in 2016 Anheuser-Busch-InBev beer corporation was involved in a $100 billion-plus takeover of rival SABMiller, the biggest corporate acquisition in the history of the industry, “ushering in a new world order for the beer industry”. The transaction made AB-InBev the largest beer corporation in the world, nearly twice the size of its nearest rival Heineken. Needless to say, with this type of type of wealth comes power and corporations are in the business of profit, not public welfare.

Unfortunately, we are now witnessing the outright abuse of such power. For example, in the lead up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil – FIFA on behalf of its major sponsor – Anheuser-Busch forced the Brazilian government to change its laws in what famously became known as the “Budweiser Bill”.  Here, a global corporation, in partnership with an international sport organisation forced a national government to remove alcohol sale restrictions that were put in place to protect citizens. 

The bottom line is that there are solutions but it takes courageous and principled politicians that truly value the health and wellbeing of its citizens more than the interests of its corporate backers to introduce change. Sadly, despite overwhelming evidence of the social harm being caused by a lack of regulation of alcohol, little meaningful action has taken place and at this point there is not much cause for optimism where business interests trump the interests of citizens.

Last updated: 12 Jan 2017 10:30am

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