Since then, each Summer and Winter Olympics has adopted a strict smoke-free coverage and, since 2010, a whole tobacco-free coverage. Smoking is just not permitted at any Paris 2024 venues besides in designated areas—a rule that extends to vaping.
Alcoholic beverage firms are one other class of controversial Olympic sponsors, from Molson Brewery at the 1976 Montreal Olympics to Heineken at the 2004 Athens video games.
Though the IOC is partnered with AB InBev, the world’s main brewer, Corona Cero—a zero-alcohol drink—is the world beer sponsor of the Paris Olympics. The Olympic Committee says this highlights each organizations’ “commitment to responsible consumption and a better world.”
Efforts like the Kick Big Soda Out of Sport marketing campaign aren’t popping out of nowhere. In the 2012 London Olympics, Coca-Cola’s sponsorship, which featured varied promotional actions centered on youth engagement, confronted important backlash. And in 2021, the firm’s sponsorship modified; Coca-Cola now has a joint “Olympic Partner,” or TOP, settlement with Mengniu, a Chinese dairy-product firm, that makes them the unique nonalcoholic beverage sponsors of the Games. (The TOP programme is the Olympics’ highest degree of sponsorship.)
“Coca-Cola gets positively connected with a dairy food company and the ‘health halo’ that comes with that,” says Joe Piggin, senior lecturer in sport Policy at Loughborough University. Therefore, although a joint sponsorship could appear to reduce the significance of Coca-Cola’s funding, strategically this transfer really leverages the firm’s sponsorship and future longevity.
From 2021 to 2032 (when their contract is up), the joint sponsors can pay an estimated complete of $3 billion to the IOC. Coca-Cola’s 14-person athlete roster was revealed in the lead-up to the 2024 video games. The face of this marketing campaign is that this picture, through which the athletes maintain bottles of Coca-Cola’s drinks. Certain athletes maintain full-sugar Coca-Cola itself, which has 53 grams of sugar per 500 milliliter—virtually double the really useful every day sugar consumption for an grownup.
Many of the athletes maintain Powerade Original, one other of Coca-Cola’s drinks, which comprises 5.8 grams of sugar per 600-milliliter bottle, virtually 20 p.c of the really useful every day consumption. (Powerade can also be the official drink of the US Olympic workforce.)
Experts have mentioned that this advertising technique mirrors Olympians of the previous hawking cigarettes. A current venture by the Centre for the Study of Tobacco and Society investigated this, noting that Harold “Dutch” Smith, a high-diving champion, was quoted in a 1935 Saturday Evening Post advert saying, “Camels don’t get your wind.”
“If a cigarette company tried to run a commercial on network TV during the Olympics, there would be such an outcry. It [should be] no different for Coca-Cola,” says Lustig. (“The Coca-Cola Company provides a wide range of beverage options that include dairy and juice drinks as well as water, tea, coffee, and sparkling beverages, with many sugar-free options available,” an IOC spokesperson tells WIRED.)
“We urge sports organizations to stop promoting unhealthy food and drink and work with health experts to create a healthier food environment,” mentioned Zoe Davies, a nutritionist from Action on Sugar, in an announcement issued to WIRED.
Coca-Cola didn’t reply to WIRED’s request for remark. ”The firm has used its entrance teams to advance the argument that the lack of bodily train and not its sugary drinks are fueling an weight problems disaster,” says researcher Ashka Naik from Corporate Responsibility. However, Coca-Cola has been criticized for its manipulation of science to justify this shifting of blame.
Experts that WIRED spoke with persistently held that Coca-Cola ought to be the subsequent Olympic sponsor to go; nevertheless, they don’t count on this to occur anytime quickly.
Many consultants steered {that a} shift shouldn’t be left to the organizations themselves. In order to cease sports activities organizations from “taking money from ultra-processed food companies,” there have to be “public policy measures,” says Lustig. “When there are more votes than dollars, that’s when things will change.”