Using sport as a tool to market unhealthy food

This paper is focused on how unhealthy food and drinks companies sponsor sports athletes, teams and events as a means of promoting their brands. Currently, across many sports, there is evidence of unhealthy food and drink sponsors. From a business perspective, sport provides an ideal platform to influence the public into forming positive attitudes towards their brands. Sport also provides companies with an opportunity to target and penetrate new and unexplored markets. The objective of this paper is to highlight this contradictory association that ethically needs reviewing. Within this paper it is argued that due to the potential impacts of developing inaccurate attitudes of unhealthy food and drinks companies, sports governing bodies can and should make a stance against allowing these brands to be aligned with a healthy life pursuit.