Background
sports-related alcohol
EVENTS, EVENT, HOLIDAYS
Alcohol companies invest heavily in sponsorship of elite sport, with 30 of the leading alcoholic beverage brands globally spending a combined $764.5 million on sport sponsorship in 2018 [While spectator participation levels at sporting events have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, around one in five Australians aged 15 and over was projected to attend at least one sporting event in 2022 [At present, there are very few restrictions on alcohol advertising, and no restriction of alcohol brand sponsorship of sport, under current legislation and regulatory codes in Australia. For example, while the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice limits the broadcast of advertisements (ads) for alcoholic products on television to mature and adult viewing classification periods, alcohol brand sponsorship and alcohol product advertising during live sporting events and sports programs on weekends and public holidays are notable exemptions to these time-based controls [Given the embedded financial and cultural association between alcohol and sport in Australia, government implementation of controls of alcohol sponsorship of sport is unlikely to occur without strong public support, a known driver of advocacy success and policy action [The present study aimed to address this gap by testing whether spectators who are shown a counter-ad exposing alcohol sponsorship and harms before viewing an alcohol-sponsored sporting event report (i) higher post-event support for policy restricting sports-related alcohol marketing and (ii) less favourable beliefs about the alcohol industry, compared to spectators shown a control ad. We also tested the counter-ad exposing alcohol sponsorship and harms against a traditional alcohol counter-ad (exposing harms associated with alcohol use) to assess the relative effectiveness of each style of counter-ad on spectators’ level of policy support and beliefs about the alcohol industry.