Alcohol

Introduction

There is little doubt that when it comes to sports, kids and teens are major league fans, outdoing adults in loyalty to the teams they love. A U.S. study conducted in 2001 found that 93 % of youth people between the ages of eight and 17 view sports on TV, and close to one third use some kind of sports media daily (TV, videogames, magazines, newspapers, the Internet or radio). And it's not just the boys who are fans. Although they consume the greatest amounts of sports media (97 percent), at 89 %, the girls aren't far behind (Kids, 2001).

A Harris Youth Sports Report in 1999 found that 29 % of kids say they are diehard fans of the National Basketball Association (NBA) games, compared with only 14% of adults (Woods, 2001). And according to the NFL's senior communications director, "Among our most avid fans, 69% said they were fans of the NFL by the time they were 12 (Alcohol Advertising, 2003)."

Given the interest and passion young people bring to the sports they play and watch, it's easy to understand why there are ethical concerns when companies for adult-oriented products, such as alcohol, use sports to reach audiences (Media Awareness, 2005).

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth's own research has demonstrated that overall alcohol advertising on televised sports programming in 2003 was more likely to be seen by adults than youth: youth make up 13.3% of the national television viewing population but on average only 9.1% of the audience for televised sports with alcohol advertising. In most cases the youth share of the audience for this advertising was lower than the proportion of youth in the television viewing population. However, for 16.5% of alcohol ad placements on televised sports ($47.1 million worth of advertising spending), the youth share of the audience was higher than the proportion of youth in the overall television viewing population (Alcohol Advertising, 2003).

Alcohol companies are also huge sports fans. In 2003 the alcohol industry spent more than $540 million to place nearly 90,000 ads in sports programs on TV in the U.S. (Alcohol, 2003). In fact, 60 % of all alcohol advertising on television occurs during sporting events (Media Awareness, 2005).

In both Canada and the U.S., beer companies focus much of their advertising expenditure on sports Ð'- just four brands of beer account for 58 % of all alcohol advertising during college sporting events. In fact, Budweiser spent more than 80% of its television advertising expenditures on sports programming in 2001, 2002 and 2003 (Media Awareness, 2005).

Statement of the Problem

The Purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of alcohol advertising in sports on underage drinking. Researcher have concluded that the more often a child sees an alcohol ad, the greater likelihood he or she will develop positive expectations about drinking (Moreau and Austin, 2000).

Review of Related Literature

There is a relationship between alcohol advertising and "big ticket" sporting events. In its study of alcohol advertising on sports television in the U.S., the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) found "significant amounts of advertising dollars" spent on high-profile events (Media Awareness, 2005). According to the Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV, the makers of alcoholic beverages spend $58 million annually on commercials during college sports programs. Of that, $28 million is spent on ads during the NCAA basketball tournament, which has more beer ads than the Super Bowl, World Series, Monday Night Football and college football bowl games combined (Dvorchak 2005).

NCAA spokesman Jeff Howard said no changes are being considered at this time but noted that the NCAA restricts the amount of time and types of alcoholic beverages advertised during its championships (ESPN 2005).

In 2003, soccer games had the highest percentage of alcohol advertising at 8.3 %, followed by hockey games (7.2 %), professional basketball games (6.8 %) and professional baseball games (4.8 %). Approximately one out of every 12 ads in soccer games was an alcohol ad. One out of 14 in hockey games, one out of 15 in professional basketball games, one out of 21 in professional baseball games and one out of 25 on college baseball games (Alcohol Marketing 2003).

While about one alcohol commercial appears in every four hours of prime-time fictional programming, one appears every 25 minutes of programming for major professional sports (football, baseball and basketball) and one for every 50 seconds of college sports programming (Grube 1993, 1995; Madden and Grube 1994). Overall. Alcohol commercials make up one and a half percent of all advertisements on prime-time television and seven percent of all advertisement in sports programming (Alcohol Advertising 2003).

Standard commercials, however, are not the only way in which alcohol is marketed on television. Alcohol advertisers use other types of promotions embedded in sports programming to place their product name, slogans and symbols before the television viewing audience. Stadium signs, brief sponsorships (such as "This half-time report is brought to you byÐ'..."), and on-site promotions (such as product names on race cars) are broadcast to the television viewing audience at a rate of 3.3 per hour in major professional sports programming, and 0.3 per hour in college programming (Grube 1993, 1995; Madden and Grube 1994).

A poll of public attitudes found that 57 % of the public support prohibiting alcoholic beverage advertisements on television, 64 % support advertising to counteract alcohol advertisements and 41 % support prohibiting sports sponsorship by the alcohol industry (Kaskutas