FEATURE
Vape companies provide sports teams with ethical
sponsorship opportunities
By Gordon Stribling
It’s shocking to recall just how ingrained smoking was in our society
until very recently. Remember when disreputable newsagents would
look the other way and sell cigarettes to schoolchildren? Or when
you could buy novelty chocolate cigarettes from the sweet shop?
That wasn’t even very long ago, certainly in the past two decades.
But that all pales into comparison to the influence tobacco had on
the world of sport up until the mid-2000s. You would think that
athletes and teams at the top of their game would want to dissociate
themselves from a product that is so damaging to health. But money
talks and the tobacco industry had a lot of it to invest in the high-
profile and glamourous world of sport.
When you think of tobacco sponsorship and sport, chances are
motorsport comes to mind. As recently as 2005, Formula One cars
were plastered with logos of Marlboro, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges,
Camel and Lucky Strike. Many of the ‘classic’ designs of the time
still have a place in the hearts of fans.
Tobacco advertising has tainted football, too. Some memorable
examples include FK Sarajevo, who had the logo of their cigarette-
manufacturing sponsor Aura emblazoned on the centre of their
shirts. Thousands of the city’s jobs were dependent on the company
at a time when war had ravaged the country.
As Guardian reader Dale Pyatt explained in a feature on cigarette
sponsorship in the sport: “There were anti-smoking messages
everywhere in Bosnia, but absolutely nobody paid any attention to
them, and cigarette companies were just about the only ones with
sufficient economic resources to sponsor sports clubs.”
Indonesia has one of the highest smoking rates in the world due
to meagre regulations and the huge influence the tobacco industry
wields on the country.
In 1994, the Indonesian football league was revamped as ‘Liga
Dunhill’ and all clubs were forced to sport the company’s logo on
their shirts. A couple of years later it was Bentoel – now owned
by British American Tobacco – that had rights to Liga Kansas,
named after their Kansas-brand cigarettes. Thankfully, tobacco
sponsorship in sport has been consigned to the past. However,
unethical sponsorship remains a contentious issue.
In 2016, Newcastle United ended their controversial shirt sponsorship
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