why it matters that footballers are shunning the corporate capture of their sport
It should be. Alcohol kills another three million people annually.
Over decades, unhealthy industries have lured sports bodies and clubs into being product ‘ambassadors’ in return for lucrative sponsorship deals. It is hypocritical and contradictory to see elite sport stars promoting junk food and drinks.
Clearly, they are not essential to enjoying sport and more importantly, they can compromise athletes’ and fans’ health. They are particularly damaging to impressionable children, who look to these sport stars for inspiration and often emulate them.
How can children distinguish fact from fiction when seeing confusing images of products, which we tell them they should have less of, being promoted by the fit and healthy athletes they aspire to be?
I recently visited my local stationery store where you are routinely offered a ream of fast-food vouchers at the till. The cashier said she had to offer them to me because of the deal between the fast-food company and the stationery store.
Where are the ethics of partnerships like this? Aside from the damaging health messages they convey, how do they affect those who have to promote them? By sharing her conflicted position and respecting my refusal, the cashier staged her own mini protest.
These examples are a drop in the ocean of the types of insidious marketing, through product placement and sponsorship, that we, and particularly children, are subjected to. These activities have been amplified during the pandemic. The NCD Alliance documented hundreds of examples, including how unhealthy industries pounced on ‘lockdown’ time to shift marketing spend filling screens and homes.
There is no question that the subtle but powerful protests by Ronaldo, Locatelli and Pogba are ripples of resistance to corporate capture of what is, essentially, a healthy activity. If the footballers’ actions start turning the tide on unhealthy sponsorship of sports, then more power to them and other athletes.
However, children, parents and even global sports superstars do not have the power to take on these powerful multinational corporations on their own – we need the might of binding international regulations.
It’s time to level the playing field for everyone by establishing a global framework on unhealthy and unethical marketing – akin to clauses in the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in force since 2005.
The WHO treaty bans all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and it forced an end to cigarette branding in football. It seems laughable now for there to be cigarette sponsorship in sport and we need the same cultural shift on junk food and alcohol. What are we waiting for now that Ronaldo, Locatelli and Pogba have already set the ball rolling?
- Lucy Westerman (@lewest) is Policy and Campaigns Manager at the NCD Alliance.
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