“Kick Big Soda out of Sport”: CSPI joins campaign to stop Olympic Coca-Cola sponsorship

29 Jul 2024 --- Together with global health groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) calls on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to drop its sponsorship from Coca-Cola. The organization notes that sponsoring sporting events allows companies to create a “health halo” for unhealthy products, such as sugary drinks, by associating them with leading athletes.

CSPI joins the global campaign “Kick Big Soda out of Sport,” which highlights the harmful effects of sugary drinks on health and the planet. 

Led by global health organizations and advocates, the campaign was launched before the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, which kicked off last Friday. The petition urging the IOC to terminate Coca-Cola’s sponsorship has garnered over 36,000 signatures and is supported by 60 partner organizations. 

“Contrary to the sunny marketing messages offered by Coca-Cola in connection with the Olympics and other sporting events, excessive consumption of Coke and other sugary drinks are linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, weight gain and other health problems,” says CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie. 

“Sugary drinks certainly don’t promote physical fitness or athletic prowess, as the sponsorship of these products during the Olympics is intended to convey.” 

Olympic sponsorship  
Coca-Cola has sponsored the Olympic Games since 1928, with the contract extending until at least 2032. CSPI cautions that event sponsorship lures athletes into tacit endorsements, which many may otherwise choose to avoid.

“Notable elite athletes like Cristiano Ronaldo and Tom Brady are known to avoid added sugars to maximize their fitness,” adds Lurie. 

The campaign asserts that sponsoring sporting events allows companies to create a “health halo” for unhealthy products.“That the relationship between Coke and the Olympics spans nearly 100 years should be seen as an embarrassment worth ending, not a tradition worth continuing. It’s time for the IOC to exercise some responsibility toward the games’ young viewers and lead them away from products antithetical to the values celebrated during the Olympics.”

Harming health and the planet 
The global campaign states that Coca-Cola’s sponsorship undermines commitments to using sport to create a better world and implicitly “endorses a world where health and environmental harms are ‘sports-washed’ away.”

The petition highlights that partnerships between sports organizations and Big Soda contribute to negative health outcomes like rising obesity and type 2 diabetes, pollute the environment with plastic, target marketing of sugary drinks to children and teens, use of water in water-scarce areas and lobby “to protect profit over health.”  

It calls on the IOC to terminate Coca-Cola’s Olympic sponsorship, commit not to accept future sponsorship from corporations that harm public health and the environment and accept sponsorships from corporations “genuinely aligned with Olympic values,” such as those that promote health and sustainability. 

The petition argues: “By kicking Big Soda out of the Olympics, the IOC will show the world that it is not just committed to talking about these values but is truly committed to making the world a better place through sport.”

By Jolanda van Hal