Over the years, the sports world has changed in a lot of ways. There has been a shift from covering games to covering the social, political and economic aspects of every perspective that a sports event may have. Nevertheless, there has been one constant in the sports world: their ads. Ads that run through games of the NFL, NHL and even little league have two big sponsor categories — the auto industry and food and non-alcoholic beverages industry.
The auto industry has been, and should remain, a sponsor to sports events. It’s been around so long that you can’t imagine watching a football game or a soccer match without watching a Toyota or a GMC ad. Although the reason behind these ads is mainly to hit their target audience, according to The Globe and Mail the ads have slowly become part of the experience, whether you’re attending a game or watching from home. However, the food and non-alcoholic beverage industry, though just as much a part of the sports-watching experience, is harming viewers, especially children, in the most ironic way possible.
Since sports are one of the best ways to keep yourself healthy and motivated, the food industry, especially junk food, has learned to take advantage of this perception. This industry spends billions of dollars so unhealthy food ads can appear in as many places as possible. But why would they spend so much money on ads that don’t seem to be working on adults? It’s because they’re not targeted at adults; at least not directly. Companies prefer to target a more easily molded and entertained demographic to sway the food choices they make for a lifetime: kids as young as age two.
According to a new study in the journal Pediatrics, major sports leagues such as the NFL have millions of young viewers, as many as 412 million under the age of 17. Food industries take advantage of these viewers because 78 percent of all the foods shown on advertisements are junk food, according to a research made by the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity research.
To think that food companies use sport events to promote their unhealthy products it’s ironic and should be prevented because it can lead to associations between sports and junk food. If you see an unhealthy food ad in between periods, the probability of you misinterpreting the unhealthiness of the food is much higher, according to the Pediatrics study. Some countries, like Chile, are addressing this issue by reducing advertising of unhealthy foods during sporting events and programming. If we don’t regulate the ads kids see, we might even face a more serious problem: obesity on an even larger scale.
