Organization urges IOC to cut ties with soft drink manufacturer in interests of athletes, spectators, planet

The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) ought to lower its ties with Coca-Cola in one of the best pursuits of athletes, spectators, and the planet, urge Trish Cotter and Sandra Mullin of the worldwide public well being group Very important Methods, in an editorial within the journal BMJ World Well being.

The corporate’s sponsorship forces athletes to implicitly endorse unhealthy sugary drinks and supplies Coca-Cola with elite entry to political and company leaders to exert its affect, insist the authors.

Coca-Cola has sponsored the Olympic Video games for nearly 100 years, they observe. And there is a good motive for that, they are saying.

“Excessive-profile sporting occasion sponsorship is normally a extremely efficient advertising and marketing technique. In 2022, The Coca-Cola Firm had 233 energetic sponsorship agreements worldwide throughout 21 sports activities. The truth is, in 2023, Coca-Cola had essentially the most sports activities sponsorship of some other model,” they level out.

However its largest energetic deal is with the IOC.

These offers not solely allow manufacturers to “leverage customers’ emotional reference to sports activities’ biggest sporting moments… However sporting occasion sponsorship additionally lures particular person athletes into tacit endorsements that many would in any other case select to keep away from,” spotlight the authors.

And there isn’t any doubting the facility of sport, they are saying, citing the instance of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. He put aside two bottles of Coca-Cola at a press convention for the European soccer championships in 2021, regardless of Coca-Cola being an official occasion sponsor, and held up as a substitute a bottle of his most popular water.

The gesture “was seen by the general public as a rebuke to the concept Coca-Cola is a benign drink embraced by athletes on the high of their recreation,” write the authors. With only a few seconds of footage, US $4 billion was reportedly wiped off the soda big’s market worth, they add.

Regardless of the proof of sugary drinks’ contribution to weight problems, sort 2 diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart illness, and the IOC’s mission to champion athletes’ well being, Coca-Cola stays a top-tier sponsor of the Olympic Video games and retains a contract via at the least 2032, observe the authors.

The model has a lot to achieve, they recommend. Greater than 3 billion folks worldwide tuned into broadcast protection of the 2020 Tokyo Video games, and 28 billion video views passed off on broadcasters’ digital platforms.

“With a viewership this dimension, promoting in the course of the Olympic Video games is a coveted alternative for corporations to function their merchandise, nevertheless detrimental to customers,” say the authors.

Sponsorship additionally provides the corporate’s senior executives prepared entry to the world’s elite athletes and company and political leaders, they level out.

“The tens of millions poured into this settlement get Coca-Cola excess of a seat on the opening ceremony. The corporate has purchased entry to varied occasions the place relationships are cast behind the closed doorways of company privilege,” they write.

Such a method “culminates in a gold medal alternative to ‘sportswash’ an unhealthy product,” they recommend, including that the packaging and distribution processes contribute vastly to plastic air pollution, greenhouse gasoline emissions, and water insecurity in poor communities as properly.

“By persevering with its affiliation with Coca-Cola, the Olympic motion dangers being complicit in intensifying a worldwide epidemic of poor vitamin, environmental degradation, and local weather change,” the authors insist.

And main worldwide public well being our bodies—the World Well being Group and the World Weight problems Federation amongst them—additionally must up their recreation, say the authors. Their advocacy for a discount in sugary drink consumption should embody a greater understanding of the distinctive function of sports activities advertising and marketing.

“The IOC should acknowledge that Coca-Cola’s continued affiliation with the Olympics contradicts the basic values of this world occasion and places the Video games liable to being complicit in our dietary and environmental crises,” write the authors.

“By severing ties with Coca-Cola, the IOC can ship a strong message that the Olympics stand for integrity, well being and sustainability. Let’s implore the IOC to behave swiftly in one of the best pursuits of athletes, spectators, and the planet,” they conclude.