It's just not cricket

In defending its hold on sport sponsorship, the liquor industry argues there’s no link between alcohol advertising and sales, and that it’s really only about brand loyalty. It’s quite a startling claim, but there are plenty out there ready to believe it. Richard Boock.

-----

A couple of years ago, while addressing the Australia and New Zealand Sports Law Association, Lion Nathan Managing Director Peter Kean insisted that a ban on alcohol advertising and sponsorship wouldn’t make any difference to youth binge drinking. He also said the purpose of alcohol promotion was “to build adoration for brands”, rather than encouraging consumers to drink more. Who knows? He might even have believed himself.

In 2006, Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) certainly swallowed his suggestion – hook, line and ice cube. In addressing the review of liquor advertising on radio and television, the government sportsfunding agency accepted the alcohol lobby’s claim and argued to retain the status-quo of self-regulation.

Talk about a sell-out.

Never mind that, only a few years earlier, the tobacco industry made the same claim during its own attempts to avoid advertising bans. The claim was roundly discredited by a host of international studies and laughed out of Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Among the most definitive of findings were:

• advertising was directly related to the number of cigarettes smoked – increased advertising meant more cigarettes smoked, and less advertising meant fewer smoked

• consumption fell annually by 1.6 percent on average in countries that banned tobacco advertising

• the percentage of young people who smoked decreased more rapidly in countries where advertising

• was banned

• in countries that banned tobacco advertising, the ban had been followed by a fall in smoking on a scale that could not reasonably be attributed to other factors.

And never mind the New Zealand study showing that, just 10 years after alcohol advertising was relaxed in 1992, consumption had doubled among our 14–17-year-olds, and a third of our teenagers were drinking to get drunk.

Look at the anecdotal evidence in sport: 22 alcohol-related scandals in the NRL this season alone. A phalanx of New Zealand rugby players has been involved in booze-related controversies: Jimmy Cowan, Doug Howlett, Jerome Kaino, Lucky Mulipola.

The world of sport is saturated by liquor advertising. Clubhouses and grounds are awash with invitations to drink. Competitions are named after grog. Players’ uniforms are emblazoned with the logos of booze companies, and every NRL, AFL, Super 14 and NPC side is visibly aligned to one. Sport has become a Trojan horse for the alcohol industry; what it can’t get away with in terms of direct advertising, it can easily do through sponsorship.

And it’s not doing it in moderation. The All Blacks are backed by Steinlager, the Wallabies by Bundaberg Rum, the Welsh by Brains, Scotland by Famous Grouse and the England cricket team by Marstons. The London Wasps, who won the Guinness Premiership last season, are sponsored by Magners Irish Cider. The European Rugby Championship is sponsored by Heineken. Yet we’re told the messages aren’t aimed at children or youth.

Liverpool and Everton FC are aligned to Carlsberg, the football League Cup to Carling, and the Champions League to Heineken. Liquor companies are beaming their way into households via all sorts of sporting competitions at any time of the night or day. A young soccer fan wanting to watch a live telecast of Chelsea playing Roma at 6am New Zealand time must negotiate Heineken beer commercials before, during and after the match. So much for the evening threshold.

If anything, the hypocrisy is worse in Australia, where cricket organisers last year announced a crackdown on drunken hoons, despite the fact that some of their biggest and most visible sponsors at the time were Johnny Walker Whisky and VB Bitter. The latter was promoted on the back of an advertising campaign featuring national selector and former test batsman David Boon in mid-swill. League, rugby and AFL officials writhe in apparent anguish over the drunken antics of their players, but continue to accept the advances of just about every booze label in the land.

It wasn’t long ago that tobacco companies were using a similar ruse to flog their poison. They would issue card collections featuring pen portraits of our most famous sportspeople in order to glamorise and normalise a practice that would kill millions of us. They carefully hijacked sporting attributes such as mateship, loyalty and generosity in their advertising campaigns, and when we finally started to awaken to their duplicity, they screamed blue murder about the right to choose.

Now the alcohol industry is up to the same old tricks, positively reinforcing liquor in the minds of young fans, many of whom want nothing more than to simply emulate their local heroes. Former World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlem-Brundtland hit the nail on the head when she warned, “Aggressive marketing of alcoholic products to youth is an important part of the problem. Not only are children growing up in an environment where they’re bombarded with positive images of alcohol, but our youth are a key target of the marketing practices of the alcohol industry.”

It’s something we need to be more aware of. Even if it is true that liquor advertising and sponsorship in sport isn’t specifically aimed at young people, it’s not really the point, is it? The main question is whether young people are being exposed to alcohol advertising in sport, and the answer is an unequivocal yes: at the ground, on television, on the radio, in the newspaper and on the internet. They’re being beckoned by an industry that’s as parasitical as the common greenfly.

With that in mind, it’s about time we viewed the liquor barons as the main perpetrators of the problem, rather than part of the solution. It took us a while to understand why the smoking industry wanted such a strong advertising alliance with sport, but there is no such excuse on this occasion with alcohol. The motives are crystal clear.

• Richard Boock is an Auckland-based sports writer.