World Cup viewers exposed to junk food, alcohol and gambling branding every 7 seconds, study finds

A recent study has revealed that during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, audiences were exposed to more than 93,000 advertisements for unhealthy food, alcohol, gambling, and speculative products per match, with unhealthy food and drink brands comprising the majority at 70.4%. The research, led by the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford, utilized the UK's powerful Isambard-AI supercomputer to analyze the 172.6 hours of live play across the 104 matches.

The scale of exposure was staggering, with harmful product branding appearing in every match and covering 39.3 hours of live play, or nearly a quarter of all live play. The most visible brands were a popular soft drink company, a major fast-food chain, a sports drink brand, and a well-known crisps manufacturer, which together accounted for 65% of all harmful commodity logos.

Dr. Raffaello Rossi, a senior lecturer in marketing, stated that this year's World Cup presented an unparalleled platform for advertising, resulting in an overwhelming and unavoidable exposure to unhealthy food, alcohol, and gambling brands for viewers, especially children and young people. Dr. Elisa Becker highlighted the global obesity crisis and emphasized that sport should be a solution to poor health rather than a platform for promoting harmful products.

The researchers criticized FIFA for not utilizing virtual board replacement technology to comply with national laws and cultural norms, resulting in gambling and prediction markets logos appearing in countries where they were unlicensed or had uncertain legal status. They called for governments to enforce marketing rules in commercial branding within live sports broadcasts and for FIFA to adopt an independently developed public interest standard for commercial partnerships and utilize existing technology to remove or replace unlawful branding.