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Campaign Information: Background
Sports play a central role in American life. Fathers play catch — and bond — with their six-year old children. Moms drive their daughters and sons to basketball practice or soccer games and cheer to boost their children's confidence. Teenagers spend hours on the practice field learning the value of teamwork, leadership, and character. Families go to college football games together and root for the alma mater.
The combination of television and sports makes a powerful impression on young people. Little Leaguers mimic a Barry Bonds home run trot. High school football players do a touchdown dance in the end zone. A pick-up game of basketball is full of high-fives. Television helps make heroes, build loyalties to a team, and mold attitudes for young athletes and fans. Millions of youth get socialization cues from sports.
Mom, baseball, and apple pie — a wholesome American combination. That is, until mom and dad sit down with their kids to watch the World Series, Super Bowl, an NCAA basketball game or almost any sports event on television. Then, parents and children see an image of American sports through the eyes of beer and liquor marketers. In the beer merchant's world, athletic competition provides a platform to cue young people to beer and the pleasures of drinking. Millions of parents, when watching a game on television with their son or daughter, feel dismay and discomfort when the mud-wrestling babes or beer-blast ads intrude on the game. They see those ads distort the positive youth development values of sports. They know that the abundance of beer ads deliver a message that sports are a pretext to party, drink and be out-of-control.
Advertisements for alcoholic beverages send powerful messages to young people — a significant portion of sports fans and a key demographic for current use and future dependency on alcohol. Youth see more commercials for beer than for juice, gum, chips, sneakers, skin care products, and jeans.1 In 2003, alcohol producers spent more than $879 million to advertise alcohol on television, with more than $540 million of that amount on televised sports events, and more than $52 million spent specifically during college sports telecasts.2 In 2005, the beer industry spent more than $1.175 billion to advertise its products, with $897 million allocated to television.3 In 2006, Anheuser-Busch alone spent over $252 million to advertise during televised sporting events — some 77.3% of its total ad spending that year.4 Today, the abundance of alcohol ads on television makes it nearly impossible to watch a televised sports event without seeing slick beer ads that attract youth attention, cultivate positive attitudes toward drinking, and mask the many risks related to underage — and adult — consumption of alcohol. Recent studies suggest that youths’ repeated exposure to alcohol advertising influences their decisions to drink and to participate in more frequent and heavier drinking.5
Alcohol is the major drug problem among youth. It is a significant factor in the four leading causes of death among persons ages 10 to 24: (1) motor-vehicle crashes, (2) unintentional injuries, (3) homicide, and (4) suicide.6 Underage drinking costs Americans nearly $62 billion annually due to alcohol-related traffic accidents, violent crime, burns, drowning, suicide attempts, alcohol poisonings, fetal alcohol syndrome, and treatment of alcohol abuse.7 Underage drinkers consume between 10 and 20 percent of the alcohol in the United States.8
Underage drinking, excessive consumption, and alcohol problems convene prominently in college sports. College sports, particularly football and men's basketball, have become important venues for the marketing and advertising of beer. More college students who are sports fans binge drink and have alcohol-related problems than non-fan students — and the fans also drink more often, and more often drink to get drunk.9
One critical step in addressing the problem of alcohol use by young people — and the companion problem of excessive drinking among adults — is to curb alcohol advertising on televised sports.
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References:
1 Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. (2002). Television: Alcohol's Vast Adland. Research Report. December 2002.
2 Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. (2004). Alcohol Advertising on Sports Television, 2001-2003. Fact Sheet.
3Adams Beverage Group, Adams Beer Handbook 2006: 125.
4Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal. (March 19-25, 2007).Top 50 sports advertisers (Ranked by total sports ad spending in 2006), 9(45): 24.
5Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth. (2007). Alcohol Advertising and Youth. Fact Sheet.
6Eaton, D.K., Kann, L., Kinchen, S., Ross, J., Hawkins, J., Harris, W.A., Lowry, R., McManus, T., Chyen, D., Shanklin, S. & Lim, C. (2006). Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance -- United States, 2005. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 55(SS-5):1-112.
7Miller, T.R., Levy, D.T., Spicer, R.S. & Taylor, D.M. (2006). Societal costs of underage drinking. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 67(4): 519-528.
8Foster, S.E., Vaughan, R.D., Foster, W.H. & Califano, J.A., Jr. (2003). Alcohol consumption and expenditures for underage drinking and adult excessive drinking. Journal of the American Medical Association. 289(8):989-95.
9Nelson, T.F. & Wechsler, H. (2003). School spirits: Alcohol and collegiate sports fans. Addictive Behaviors. 28(1):1-11. |
