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RESEARCH AND PRACTICE |
Lara Zwarun is with the Department of Communication at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Lara Zwarun, PhD, Department of Communication, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019 (e-mail: zwarun{at}uta.edu).
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ABSTRACT |
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 TOP ABSTRACT INTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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Objectives. I sought to identify what kinds of promotion for alcohol and tobacco products are found in televised sports programming, as well as how frequently they occur. I compared my findings with data from 5 and 10 years earlier to examine the effects of the Master Settlement Agreement and detect industry trends.
Method. A content analysis of more than 83 hours of televised sports programming from 2000 through 2002 was conducted. Composite week sampling was used to ensure results were representative of the overall population of television sports programs. Programs were examined for traditional advertising (commercials) and nontraditional advertising (stadium signs, announcer voiceovers, etc.).
Results. Rates of certain types of alcohol advertising have decreased, but what remains is strategically chosen to increase the likelihood of audience exposure. Despite the Master Settlement Agreement, tobacco advertising remains prevalent in many sports. A new trend of placing alcohol and tobacco brand names in commercials for other products is evident.
Conclusions. Alcohol and tobacco marketers appear able to cleverly adapt to advertising challenges, such as digital video recorders and legislation. Alcohol and tobacco brands remain visible on sports programming.
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INTRODUCTION |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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In some households, rather than making alcohol or tobacco products a taboo, parents or family friends provide access to these products to underage people.7,8 In these cases, advertising can still have an influential role by reinforcing use in general or allegiance to a particular brand.
Indeed, research suggests that exposure to alcohol and tobacco advertising is correlated with people’s attitudes toward and use of these products.9–12 Kids’ exposure to television commercials for beer occurs primarily through sports.13 Tobacco product commercials, on the other hand, are prohibited by law from running on television. Despite this ban, tobacco companies have been successful at keeping their brand names on television through their sponsorship of sporting events, most notably auto racing. Simmons Market Research Bureau data show that auto racing is now the second most watched sport on television, after football, and has a significant fan base younger than 18 years.14 There is also evidence that tobacco brand sports sponsorship may influence youth attitudes toward smoking.15 Thus, sports sponsorship has become an effective way for tobacco companies to circumvent the ban on television advertising.16
Madden and Grube’s content analysis of alcohol and tobacco advertising in television sports from 1990 through 1992 examined the frequency and nature of promotions for these products.17 By breaking each program down into 60-second intervals, they were able to report the average number of minutes per hour that a viewer might come into contact with various types of advertising messages.
The Madden and Grube study was ground-breaking in that it considered more than just traditional commercials, which they called standard advertising. In addition, the researchers looked for 3 different types of nonstandard advertising: stadium signage, on-site promotions, and brief product sponsorships. With these additional categories, the authors were able to show that there were significant amounts of advertising for alcohol and tobacco in professional sports such as basketball and football, as well as in other sports such as golf and auto racing. In some cases, the rates of nonstandard advertising were actually higher than the rates for regular commercials. The presence of nonstandard advertising for tobacco revealed that, despite the 1971 ban on television advertising for tobacco products, tobacco companies were still able to get their brand names in front of television audiences.
Five years later, a replication of this study was conducted, looking at sports programming from 1995 through 1997 and using the same categories of standard and nonstandard advertising.18 This study revealed statistically significant—and, in some cases, dramatic—increases in many forms of nonstandard advertising for both alcohol and tobacco.
In 1998, most US states and the major tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement, a massive legal document that contained, among other things, extensive restrictions on the forms of sponsorships in which tobacco companies could engage.19 The Master Settlement Agreement completely banned tobacco sponsorship in football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey, and limited each tobacco company to only 1 sponsorship per year in other sports.
Because of the wording of the Master Settlement Agreement, however, tobacco companies have a great deal of latitude in how they define "1 event" per year. For example, 1 entire racing series, such as the Winston Cup, which could be a dozen or more different races over a 10-month period, can be considered 1 event. Tobacco companies also have the option of sponsoring 1 racing team, which again might compete in dozens of races over many months.16
I replicated the 2 previous content analyses by using their same methodology to examine television sports from 2000 to 2002. Given what is known about the potentially detrimental effects that tobacco and alcohol advertising can have on young people, the extant data from 1990 through 1992 and 1995 through 1997, and the emergence of a major legal settlement placing new restrictions on tobacco advertising, I sought to identify changes in the frequency and nature of alcohol and tobacco promotion over this 10-year period.
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METHODS |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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).
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Additionally, 3 magazine-style programs about professional sports—"Inside the NFL," "NFL: Under the Helmet," and "NBA Insider"—were analyzed; the results from these additional 120 minutes of programming are considered separately from the other findings.
Measures
Broadcast information such as the year, channel, and type of sport was collected for each videotape, then all standard and nonstandard advertising was assessed. Following Madden and Grube’s methodology, each event was broken down into 60-second intervals, and for each interval, coders noted whether the following 4 items were present or absent for alcohol and tobacco products: (1) stadium signage (such as billboards, banners, stadium signs, or other standard signs), (2) on-site promotions physically or audibly present to fans at the event (such as race car decals, pit crew jumpsuits, or inflatable beer cans), (3) brief product sponsorships visible or audible only to the viewing audience (such as on-screen graphics or voiceover announcements), and (4) standard commercial messages (in the case of tobacco, which is prohibited from advertising on television, ads for tobacco cessation products or antismoking messages were considered tobacco advertising, as per Madden and Grube).
A pilot test uncovered an additional and unexpected form of nonstandard advertising—the appearance of alcohol and/or tobacco products or brand names in commercials for other products (e.g., a Viagra ad that shows the race car sponsored by the drug’s manufacturer, and in doing so, makes a Busch beer decal on that same car visible). Such sponsorship appearances were added to the study as an additional type of advertising and recorded as well.
Coding and Reliability
Two coders were trained and assessed for consistency on practice tapes. Coders worked independently; however, to calculate intercoder reliability, an hour of programming was randomly selected at 4 points for both to code. The percentage of agreement for these 4 hours of programming was entered into Scott’s pi, revealing 91.4% inter-coder reliability.20 The judgments of the study’s author were used to resolve instances of disagreement.
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RESULTS |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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2=14.00; df=1; P< .001) (Table 2). This appears to be the result of increases in the rate of alcohol advertising in professional and "other" sports (but not in college sports). Although the hourly rate of alcohol commercials in other sports was down from 5 years earlier, the rate in professional sports was higher in this study than in either of the previous 2 studies. This rate was nearly 3 minutes of alcohol ads per hour, all for beer with the exception of 1 wine ad during an NFL game. The commercials appeared more frequently in football games than basketball (Table 3).
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There was a great deal of variance in how frequently alcohol commercials appeared in the other sports, ranging from none in boxing or figure skating to 2.7 minutes per hour in golf.
Commercials for other products. The appearance of brand messages for alcohol products in commercials for other products is a relatively recent phenomenon that was not measured in the 1990 through 1992 or 1995 through 1997 studies. In 2000 through 2002, these commercials appeared at a rate of less than 1 minute per hour in all categories of sports, yet they were present in all categories. For example, during professional sports, Budweiser signage was visible in ads for the NBA.com Web site, an upcoming US Snowboard Grand Prix, and in a promotion for the Olympics, and in college sports, there was an instance of a wine company being featured in a corporate advertisement for the Siemens brand.
The overall rate of this type of commercial in the "other" sports category was largely the result of auto racing, which had 2.3 minutes per hour of ads for nonalcoholic products that contained alcohol references. During this sport, beer brands were visible in ads for AC Delco, Enterprise rental car, upcoming National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) events, and other companies/events. Several other sports in this category featured these commercials to a lesser degree, with Budweiser signage visible in ads for NASCAR racing that aired during the Olympics and in an ad for the Olympic games that aired during figure skating.
Nonstandard advertising.
Across all sports, there was a significant decrease in alcohol stadium signage compared with 1995 through 1997 (2 = 417.95; df= 1; P< .001), with 2000 through 2002 levels comparable to those found in 1990 through 1992. In professional sports, stadium signage was visible to television viewers for about 3.5 minutes of every hour, and was far more common in basketball (8.7 min/h) than football (1.6 min/h). Although stadium signage for alcohol in college sports decreased compared with 1995 through 1997 levels (2 = 33.23; df= 1; P< .001), it remained present at a significantly higher rate than in 1990 through 1992 (2 = 37.74; df= 1; P< .001).
On-site alcohol promotions were absent in professional sports, and disappeared from collegiate ones. In other sports, these promotions were about half as frequent as they were in 1995 through 1997 (2 = 82.54; df = 1; P < .001), but nearly 7 times as high as they were in 1990 through 1992 (2 = 399.42; df= 1; P< .001), all because of boxing and auto racing. In boxing, beer logos on the scoreboard were present in 9 minutes per hour of programming, and logos on the floor and corner posts of the boxing ring were visible in 37 of every 60 minutes on average. In auto racing, decals and patches for alcohol products were visible on the cars and drivers’ clothing for a little more than twenty minutes of every hour.
Sponsorship messages directed at the television audience appeared at roughly the same rate as they did in 1995 through 1997, which is a significant increase from 1990 through 1992 levels (2 = 13.17; df = 1; P < .001). There was a significant decrease in these messages in professional sports compared with 1995 through 1997 (2 = 5.22; df = 1; P < .025), but it appears to be largely offset by an increase in such messages in the "other" sports category (2 = 5.97; df = 1; P < .025). All of these sports except figure skating contained on-air announcements or graphics for alcohol sponsors, with boxing containing an average of almost 3 minutes per hour, and auto racing containing an average of almost 6 minutes per hour.
Tobacco
There were no increases in any of the forms of tobacco promotion that were measured in the previous studies for any category of sport (Table 4). Regarding standard advertising, there were 2 commercials for the Nicorette smoking cessation patch and 2 anti-smoking commercials during professional sports, though this did not represent a significant increase from 1995 through 1997 levels, and there were no tobacco product commercials in college or other sports. However, as with alcohol, there were several instances of tobacco brand messages appearing in ads for other products. These occurred during both professional basketball and football, where an ad for fast-food restaurant Wendy’s featured a race-car driver whose jumpsuit bore a "Winston Cup" logo; golf, where a tobacco product brand name was visible in a Viagra ad; auto racing, where a tobacco brand appeared in a NASCAR ad; and the Olympics, where the Winston brand name was visible or mentioned in ads for Viagra and Chevrolet.
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2 = 68.38 df= 1 P< .001 and 2 = 191.95 df= 1 P< .001, respectively), as well as a decrease in on-site promotions compared with 1995 through 1997 (2 = 42.79; df= 1; P< .001). Auto racing remains a common home for tobacco product promotion, with slightly less than 2 minutes per hour in which either stadium signs or other on-site promotions were visible. However, overall, the amount of stadium and on-site promotions in the "other" sports category was down from 1995 through 1997 (2 = 110.75 df= 1 P< .001 and 2 = 5.88 df= 1 P< .025 respectively). Auto racing also contained an average of more than 4 minutes per hour of tobacco company sponsorship messages directed to the television audience, and in college sports, allusions to the Winston Cup racing series were made by a sportscaster.
Sports Talk Shows
I also looked at a small number of sports talk shows to see what sorts of alcohol and tobacco advertising they contained. No tobacco promotions were found, but alcohol commercials appeared at a rate of half a minute per hour; stadium signage for alcohol products was visible at a rate of 8 minutes per hour.
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DISCUSSION |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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There are certainly a number of encouraging decreases in rates of alcohol advertising of different types in this study. However, a careful examination of what kinds of advertising have remained or increased shows that alcohol marketers are able to respond effectively to whatever challenges they face from regulatory influences and shifts in television-viewing behavior.
Research by the Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth revealed that between 2001 and 2003, the number of traditional alcohol commercials on television increased annually, and their presence in the shows that are most popular with teenagers aged 12 to 17 years similarly increased.21 This sort of increase is also reflected in the sports programming in this study.
For example, there is an increase in the already high amount of alcohol advertising during professional sports, which may be a reaction to data showing that males aged 18 to 34 have become increasingly difficult to reach via most television programming. Additionally, although no liquor ads were found in this study, despite the relaxation of the liquor industry’s voluntary ban on television advertising in recent years, there were ads for "malternative" beverages, and all of them aired during college sports. Makers of these sweet-tasting beverages have come under fire for allegedly targeting them to young people, so it is noteworthy that they were advertised during shows that are likely to have many college-aged people in the audience. This targeting of young audiences is consistent with Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth data showing that in 2003 more than $30 million was spent to place alcohol commercials in all 15 of the top-rated shows among teens.21
Although in general there was less nonstandard alcohol advertising than there was 5 years earlier, what persisted, like the placement of traditional advertising, appeared to be carefully chosen. For example, on-screen announcements or graphics can be found in auto racing, boxing, golf, and the Olympics, which may reflect an effort to counter the effects of digital video recorders by placing promotional messages where they cannot be avoided even if viewers skip commercials. At the same time, stadium signage and on-site promotion rates have decreased, perhaps because marketers realize there is more value in an audible or visual reference to the "Bud Play of the Day" or the "Busch Racing Leaders," which is more likely to be noticed by someone interested in statistics and highlights, than a sign that appears randomly throughout the event.
Also noteworthy is the appearance of alcohol brand names in commercials for other products, brands, events, and Web sites, including some likely to be popular with young people, such as the NBA or NASCAR.com. This type of advertising appears to have thus far "flown under the radar" of researchers and policymakers, again reflecting the strategic tenacity of marketers of regulated products.
Changes in amounts and types of tobacco advertising were especially important to examine given the significant legislative developments since the most recent study was conducted. The stipulation in the Master Settlement Agreement that limits tobacco companies from sponsoring more than 1 sport per year seems to have been effective in making tobacco companies focus their promotional dollars largely on auto racing and boxing. However, because the Master Settlement Agreement allows a 10-month series of car races to be considered 1 event, tobacco companies are still able to have a significant presence on television screens, even though legally they cannot air commercials there. The high levels of tobacco promotions found in the auto races in this study reflect that this is exactly what they are doing.
As with alcohol, the brand names of tobacco products appeared in commercials for other products, often on a race car or race-car driver—a troubling finding given the ban on tobacco television advertising. Moreover, these commercials appeared in professional basketball and football as well as golf—not just auto racing, which typically already contained high levels of tobacco promotion. If these occurrences are added to the more legitimate forms of sponsorship measured in this study, they increase the rates at which these types of sponsorship appear, in some cases significantly. Thus, the data here show that the Master Settlement Agreement is not entirely successful at keeping tobacco messages off television screens, and also show the creative resiliency of the tobacco advertisers as they face new restrictions on promoting their products.
Although there is not enough sports talk show programming in this study to produce reliable results, the prevalence of stadium signage visible in what was examined suggests that this genre of programming is a rich area for future research. These shows, which tend to be popular with young male audiences, feature clips from previously aired games, representing free and unmeasured additional exposures for advertisers. Also interesting is that alcohol and tobacco promotion were found in programming from Home Box Office, a subscription cable channel without commercials, illustrating that even when traditional advertising is not an option, alcohol and tobacco advertisers can find opportunities to get their brands in front of consumers’ eyes.
As Bertrand Russell remarked, as advertisers become savvier, they recognize that often it is less important that ads be informative or persuasive than that they be noticed and repeated: " . . . so long as an impression is made, the desired result is achieved."22 Although it is not possible for a content analysis to determine the efficacy of alcohol and tobacco companies’ sports marketing efforts, it appears that the companies agree with Russell’s perspective, and that regulation will merely result in them finding innovative ways to capture their target market’s attention. There are certainly other factors that contribute to a person’s decision whether to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol, but alcohol and tobacco brands’ repeated appearance in and association with televised sports appears to be valuable to these companies as a means to promote their brands.
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Acknowledgments |
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Human Participant Protection
No human participants were involved in this study.
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Footnotes |
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Accepted for publication September 17, 2005.
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References |
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TOPABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONMETHODSRESULTSDISCUSSIONReferences |
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