Sports shows promoting alcohol to children

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/mu-ana091715.php

Public Release: 18-Sep-2015
AFL, NRL, and cricket promoting alcohol to children
Research from Monash University shows that Australian children and adolescents receive millions of exposures to alcohol advertising when watching AFL, NRL, and Cricket on TV, with 47 percent of the exposures occurring during children's daytime viewing
Monash University

With two footy finals series set to begin in earnest next week, new research from Monash University shows that Australian children and adolescents receive millions of exposures to alcohol advertising when watching AFL, NRL, and Cricket on TV, with 47 per cent of the exposures occurring during children's daytime viewing.

Published this week in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review the study found that there were 3544 alcohol adverts in free-to-air AFL, NRL, and Cricket, representing 60 per cent of all alcohol advertising in sport TV.

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"The study considerably underestimates children's true exposure to alcohol advertising when watching sport, because the data we report here do not include alcohol advertising on players uniforms, stadium signage, or on the playing surface, and was restricted to live sports," study lead Associate Professor Kerry O'Brien said.

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"What was striking was the extent of children's exposure because of the clause allowing alcohol advertising in daytime sport. It's banned in every other TV genre because it's known to be harmful to children, so why is sport exempt? It just doesn't make sense," study lead-author Dr Sherilene Carr said.

"The alcohol industry's job is to increase sales and consumption of alcohol, so they can't be expected to protect young people's health, but the AFL, NRL, and Cricket, could care more than they apparently do. I think parents have had enough of the gambling, fast food, and alcohol advertising in sport. Surely sport is important and popular enough to the nation to be able to attract other sponsors and advertisers," Associate Professor O'Brien said.

Along with other recent reports, the study suggests that removing a clause in current regulations that allows alcohol advertising during the daytime in sport, and preventing alcohol advertising before 9.30pm, could halve children and adolescents exposure to alcohol advertising.