Coca-Cola is a major sponsor of the Olympics. Pascal Le Segretin/Getty Images Hide caption
Toggle caption Pascal Le Segretin/Getty Images
The soda giant's market capitalization fell by $4 billion after Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo slid two Coca-Cola bottles off-camera during a 2021 press conference and held up a bottle of water to toast to his hundreds of millions of social media followers.
“Such is the power of sport,” public health advocates Trish Cotter and Sandra Marin wrote in an op-ed published this week in BMJ Global Health. They call on the International Olympic Committee to sever its financial ties to Coca-Cola and stop using its power to promote sugary drinks that are linked to a global rise in obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.
“Promoting unhealthy, sugary drinks in the interest of everyone's health is clearly out of place in sport,” wrote Cotter and Marin, who work for the nonprofit global health organization Vital Strategies. “Despite evidence of adverse health effects and contradicting the IOC's mission to champion the health of athletes, Coca-Cola remains a top Olympic sponsor.”
The editorial noted that Coca-Cola had more sponsorship deals in place than any other brand in 2023, including a multi-billion-dollar deal with the IOC.
The deal gives the soda maker an “unparalleled marketing opportunity” – its red logo will be emblazoned on the stadium's walls and broadcast around the world – and allows Coca-Cola to “exploit kids by pumping messages that exploit their emotional vulnerabilities into their digital worlds,” the editorial said.
In fact, this year's Summer Olympics garnered unprecedented viewership both broadcast and online, NBC reported, with more than 17 billion minutes of streaming video watched online, more than all previous Olympics combined.
The commentary echoes the “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport” campaign, which was launched a week before the opening of the 2024 Paris Olympics and is backed by 80 public health and sustainability organisations around the world, from the Mexican National Institute of Health to the Australian Public Health Association.
The campaign's video ad begins with a young man downing a Coke and spitting it out, and then says, “Big Soda, your sport-washing methods don't work on us.”
Like the BMJ editorial, the advert links soda to the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes, criticises soda companies for depleting water resources and littering the oceans with plastic bottles, criticises the industry for opposing health legislation and claims soda makers are using sport “to deliberately target children”.
The ad concludes: “The game is over.”
But the goal is still not in sight.
In response to the BMJ commentary, the IOC responded to NPR in a statement: “The IOC is proud of its nearly 100-year partnership with The Coca-Cola Company,” the IOC said. The company makes drinks with less sugar than Coca-Cola and also produces sugar-free versions, the statement said. It went on to cite Coca-Cola's responsible marketing policy, which states the company does not market its products directly to children under the age of 13.
For Marion Nestle, professor emeritus of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, the IOC's response to the editorial came as no surprise.
“There is too much money involved for the IOC to reject it,” she said in an email.
She called the responsible marketing policy a “joke.”
“The policy itself is based on the absurd notion that children under 13 would not watch television programs, sporting events or music events promoted by Coca-Cola, when more than 70 percent of the audience is aged 13 or over,” she said.
“Of course,” she added, “and that's why Olympic sponsorship is so important and effective.”
If the IOC's partnership with Coca-Cola continues, the Olympics risk becoming “complicit in exacerbating the global epidemics of malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change”, the BMJ editorial said.
The authors point out that in a recent speech, IOC President Thomas Bach promised to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy products. They ask that the IOC acknowledge that continuing its partnership with Coca-Cola goes against Bach's promise and “the core values that this iconic sporting event stands for.”
Ronny Cohen is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist focusing on health and social justice issues.
