It has not taken long for Cricket Australia to take the lead in poorly handling the growing challenge from the health lobby to the sponsorship of sport by the alcohol industry.
The flippant, offhanded, way Cricket Australia has responded to the greatest challenge sport has faced since tobacco sponsorship and advertising were banned ought to ring alarm bells in the nation’s major sporting bodies.
Cricket Australia’s spokesman is reported as claiming “banning alcohol sponsorship would impinge on sport’s ability to deliver community programs that had a positive impact on health”. He went on to add elsewhere in rejecting any link between sponsorship by alcohol companies and increased drinking by cricketers that “we’re paid in dollars, not in schooners”.
The latter comment totally overlooks the fact that every time the national team is pictured drinking in the dressing rooms after a win (less often than usual these days) it is always the sponsor’s product! They might not be paid in schooners — but there is never any shortage of cartons!
The health lobby today must be fairly drooling at the politically inept way one of the major beneficiaries from alcohol sponsorship has responded to a serious challenge, prompted by a study — involving 1200 athletes — which make a link between alcohol sponsorship and heavy drinking by athletes.
The release of the study was quickly followed by a call from Queensland’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Janette Young, for alcohol advertising, including sports sponsorship, to be banned as a public health measure. You will have to take very short odds if you don’t believe other states will follow — and the Commonwealth may not be far behind.
If the major sporting bodies doubt the issue is a serious challenge, they need only look at the history of tobacco sponsorship. Twenty years ago it largely underpinned major sports — today it is history, having been phased out in a comparatively short time frame.
Potentially, the alcohol sponsorship of sport is as vulnerable, of not even more so. Every time the media reports on alcohol fuelled bad behaviour by sports stars — and it remains a weekly occurrence — the alleged link between sponsorship and drunken behaviour will be raised.
Unless the major sporting bodies take the challenge seriously, very seriously, they will soon find the pressures to limit alcohol sponsorship, and then ban it completely, will be very attractive to governments struggling with one of the growing social challenges of our time.
The major sports are all exposed to limits on alcohol sponsorship — especially rugby league and cricket. But rules and union are not far behind.
The one sport which is much less exposed that it used to be is horse racing — but it has headed down an equally hazardous track increasing its sponsorship by non-TAB gambling entities. Last week, the Melbourne Racing Club signed a major sponsorship deal with the part James Packer owned, Betfair — much to the chagrin of Tabcorp.
If the major sporting bodies allow the politically unwise comments by Cricket Australia to be the benchmark for the response to what is a serious challenge then the health lobby will step up its campaign — and the sponsorship of sport by breweries and the liquor industry generally will be really under the skids, if it is not so already.
Yep and…? Jeff you seem to be saying that without alcohol sponsorship sport and life may be out there Captain… but no longer as we know it. The tobacco issue turned out to be a no brainer and I cannot recall how this impacted negatively on the fortunes of the large franchises such as the Benson and Hedges World Cup or the Winfield Cup. As a member of your “health lobby” that treats over 500 new people per year every year in rural NSW for the consequences primarily of alcohol abuse we may be forgiven sometimes for feeling that the pointy end of the wedge is being shoved up our collective fundaments when there is this ongoing defence of our community’s ambivalent relationship with alcohol. We in the treatment industry are pragmatic about the role of alcohol in everyday life but feel uncomfortable about this multi billion dollar industry being given carte blanche under the guise of so called self regulation and leaving it up to them to determine where to draw the line. You are aware no doubt that Drinkwise, the ‘independent’ body that advises the government on alcohol policy issues, has 50% membership from the industry and will tell us all with a straight face that they ‘care’ and possibly even believe it. In response to the issue of alcohol and sporting sponsorship I guess that the industry may feel slightly wounded at a tilt at the sacred cash cow, but must also feel the swell of public and government sentiment and would want to align themselves more positively and closely with your ‘health lobby’ through programs for instance like the Australian Drug Foundation’s Good Sports Program (as endorsed by our PM and seen on TV). I have a sneaking suspicion sport will survive another ‘attack’ on their sponsorship dollars and no doubt whatsoever the alcohol industry will morph into whatever is needed to maintain their veneer of social respectability. We just continue to pick up and try to reassemble the pieces of the broken, cast aside units. Nobody’s fault really.
So who is going to sponsor sport? CA got belted around the head for taking money from the makers of the dirty bird, now alcohol and next month gambling will probably get a kick.
Actually the media have already been into cricket’s punter.
The difference between the above and ciggies is there is no such thing as a safe ciggy.
But one can occasionally have fast food, a few beers and and a small flutter without either addiction or wanting to glass the neighbour’s neck after losing all the fast food funds on a slow Dapto dishlicker.
Craig Mills & Mary Anne: spot on, folks.
How sick are we? The alcohol industry is greedy, manipulative, rich and dangerous. It is high time that all alcohol advertising was banned, sponsorship was shunned and sales outlets savagely reduced. Domestic violence and alchol sales outlets go hand in hand, likewis road trauma.
No alcohol is safe for pregnant women.
Young people do foolish things under the influence of alcohol, old men become disgusting, young men become a danger to themselves and to those around them.
Our government is frightened to clamp down on the industry though the health cost to the nation is enormous because the industry is so powerful and it makes large contributions to politcal parties. The liquor industry and the political parties make money out of alcohol, the rest of us pay the price in broken health, broken homes and broken bones. We are very sick indeed.
If professional sport cannot survive without this mind altering and addictive drug then we should consider going back to real sport played by people who play sport because they enjoy the challenge of the game itself. Sport used to draw great crowds before players were paid fabulous dollars.