Eurocare criticizes F1 deal with Heineken

The NGO based in Brussels had remained silent on alcohol advertising in F1 for a year, but the arrival of Heineken in the Montreal paddock gave it the perfect opportunity to highlight its ideas and its desire to ban this type of advertising.

Thus, in her letter addressed to the President of the Place de la Concorde, Marianne Skar, the secretary-general of the association, recalls the data from her observations: “F1 must ask itself if it wants to be a motorsport or an alcohol brand event. When we studied the 2015 Monaco Grand Prix, we found eleven references to alcohol brands per minute, averaging one every five seconds.”

However, it can be noted that the association today refers to last year’s race while, last year, it stated that it had conducted its study on the 2014 edition of this event. Did it conduct a complete new study or simply estimate that the 2014 data could be reused for 2015, even though we had already raised concerns about the methodological shortcomings (study of a single race with a particular commercial status)?

This does not prevent him from criticizing the new agreement and once again demanding the same ban: « What’s going to happen when Heineken arrives as a major sponsor in addition to the others? If the sport and alcohol producers want to be perceived as responsible industries, they must stop this agreement and abandon alcohol sponsorship in F1. »

If the words remain the same, the actions (or their absence) also remain the same since no concrete action has been taken with the European Commission to achieve the same fate as tobacco advertising, which has now disappeared from screens.

Moreover, the association is much less vocal about Heineken’s sponsorship of Euro 2016, even though the street battles in Marseille, caused by drunk hooligans, made headlines in all the newspapers during the same weekend…

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr