Kicking the Habit: 'Addictive' Sport Sponsorship in Britain, 1965-2025

Today's post comes to us from the Wellcome-funded project, "Kicking the Habit." Read on for the biographies of the impressive team of historians leading this project and a preview of the research to come.

Commercial sponsorship is now ubiquitous in professional sports. From matchday programmes and pitch-side hoardings to players’ shirts and branded trophies, sponsors have continuously developed creative ways to publicise their brands and products. Whilst sponsorship itself is not new, the pace and extent of its spread is a uniquely modern phenomenon (Polley 1988, 65). This includes the proliferation of sports sponsorship by ‘addictive industries’ – companies whose products and activities can result in long-term, damaging, and compulsive behaviours. Notable examples include the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries, whose products pose serious risks to public health.

In the first piece of major legislation since the 1965 ban on tobacco advertising on television, Tony Blair’s Labour government banned tobacco sponsorship in 2002. Nonetheless, sports fans are still routinely exposed to promotional messages produced by alcohol, gambling, and tobacco industries – the latter now driven by the rise in nicotine products such as vapes. The involvement of these addictive industries in sports causes pressing health issues; particularly for those at higher risk of the harms posed by such products. It has been shown that gambling advertisements prompt unplanned betting in nine out of ten people who are harmed by gambling (Wardle et al. 2022, 3). It is ironic that many sports have relied on ‘addictive sponsorship’ for their survival, given that active participation in sports is strongly associated with a healthy lifestyle.

The ‘Kicking the Habit’ project – funded by a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award and running between 2024-2030 – will explore the historical circumstances which led to the first sponsorship deals by addictive industries in British professional sport from the 1960s to the present day (2025). It will consider why interested parties were incentivised to undertake sponsorship, alongside the individual and collective harms created by addictive sponsorship, and how they reciprocally influenced policy. By examining the tobacco, alcohol, and gambling industries' relationships with five professional sports (football, rugby, cricket, Formula One (F1), and tennis), ‘Kicking the Habit’ will interrogate what the production of health-harming behaviours by commercial companies means for sport, industry, and the interested public (Greenwood, Mold and Wardle 2023).

The research is structured around three strands – tobacco, alcohol, and gambling. The tobacco strand is led by Professor Anna Greenwood, at the University of Nottingham, who’s working alongside Dr Daniel O’Neill. The alcohol strand is led by Professor Alex Mold, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who’s working with Dr Jamie Banks. The gambling strand is led by Professor Heather Wardle, at the University of Glasgow, who works with Dr Fabiola Creed.

Tobacco Strand:

In April 2024, the McLaren F1 racing team announced an extension to their commercial partnership with British American Tobacco (BAT). Consequently, McLaren’s cars continue to be adorned by the brand logos of BAT’s Vuse vapes and Velo’s nicotine pouches. BAT claims its sponsorship of McLaren supports their goal to ‘build… a Smokeless World’ (Anon 2024a). However, such altruism should be regarded with scepticism. The move is the latest in a long history of sponsorship deals struck between the tobacco industry and sports bodies, each designed to encourage the consumption of nicotine-delivering products.

Historically, British cigarette manufacturers were marketing pioneers. Beginning in the 1960s, they developed longstanding sponsorship agreements which saw cigarette branding colonise all manner of competitions, races, and vehicles (O’Neill and Greenwood 2022). In F1, the Nottingham-based firm John Player & Sons (Player’s) was the first cigarette manufacturer to sponsor a team for a complete season. Player’s formed a partnership with Team Lotus between 1968 and 1978, and from 1981 to 1986. During this time, Lotus decorated their cars with the logos and colours of major cigarette brands, including Player Special’s distinctive black and gold colour scheme. The vehicles were designed to work as high-profile ‘[b]rand references’, garnering publicity for Player’s cigarettes ‘indirectly in newspaper pictures, on television, [and] in films’ (Lincoln 1968). As success on the track was vital to maximise the exposure of Player’s products, the company invested millions of pounds in Team Lotus to help its drivers achieve podium finishes.

Player’s entry into the glamorous world of F1 occurred within the context of the ongoing smoking and health crisis. When, in the 1960s, political and broadcasting authorities introduced restrictions on cigarette advertising in Britain, cigarette manufacturers were forced to find new ways to market their products. Sports sponsorship solved their marketing crisis. It provided all-important television exposure whilst allowing firms to present themselves as the generous benefactors of the nation’s sport. Tobacco sponsorship remained a mainstay of British sport until it was banned in 2002 under the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act. However, as the current McLaren-BAT partnership demonstrates, the tobacco industry is prepared to, once again, exploit grey areas when promoting its products.

Figure 1: Ronnie Peterson - John Player Special Lotus 78 enters Casino Square during practice at the 1978 Monaco GP. Photographer/Credit: Martin Lee.

Alcohol Strand:

In October 2024, the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) announced a new sponsorship deal with the lager brand Carling. In discussing the deal, SPFL’s chief executive, Neil Doncaster, praised the move, emphasising Carling’s ‘rich history’ of supporting the Scottish game (Anon 2024b). This included Carling’s sponsorship of both of the ‘Old Firm’ teams – Celtic and Rangers – for much of the 2000s (Anon 2003). By contrast, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems, a harm-reduction charity, criticised the move, suggesting it was ‘out of step’ with the country’s burgeoning public health crisis (Anon 2024b).

Neil Doncaster was certainly right to note the rich history of alcohol sponsorship in Scottish Football. Whilst its antecedents can be traced to the early 1970s, sponsorship blossomed in the 1980s. The Scottish League Cup was first sponsored by Bell’s Whisky in the late seventies and then by Alloa Brewery (Skol) in the 1980s (Crampsey 1990, 240-2). Similarly, Bass, (Tennent’s) replaced the Scottish Health Education Group as the sponsor of the Scottish Cup in 1989 (Anon 1989).

This proliferation of alcohol sponsorship again occurred in the context of trying times for both Scottish Football and alcohol companies. The declining attendance at football matches, coupled with dwindling revenues from gate receipts, imposed serious financial pressures on the game (Crampsey 1990, 188-9). Similarly, for alcohol companies, the increasingly competitive market pushed brewing and distilling companies to latch onto sponsorship as a cost-effective means of standing out from their rivals (Collins and Vamplew 2002, 61). An unintended consequence of this proliferation were growing concerns about the broader public health implications of sponsorship. It was suggested by the Scottish secretary of the British Medical Association, Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, that ‘… sponsorship and advertising of alcohol and tobacco products does have a negative effect and does obviously encourage young people into the habit’ (Anon 1989).

Gambling Strand:

In the summer of 2024, Germany hosted the European Football Championships. The live event was shown in the UK via the public broadcaster (the BBC) and independent ITV. Millions of people watched at home and in public venues. During the England vs. Spain final, approximately 24 million people saw the game, surpassing one-third of Britain’s population. For many fans, memories of the championship consisted of both the matches and the adverts of betting firms, including Ladbrokes, Sky Bet, and Paddy Power (Lee 2024).

Of the three, Sky Bet produced the most stirring advert. Their ‘Tournament Turmoil’ campaign sought to empathise with fans who struggled to support England’s team because some players originated from rival domestic teams. In the second part of this campaign, a young woman and third-generation Manchester United fan explains her inner turmoil. When watching the game, she ‘shameful[ly]’ celebrates a ‘worldy’ England goal from ‘that grubby [Manchester] city lad’. To ease the turmoil, Sky Bet offers a ‘completely free bet on every England game … for the fans’ (Anon. 2024c).

This campaign played on the passions of football fans. It romanticised family football histories and acknowledged fan-based conflicts, seizing this tension and offering free bets to ease the perceived pain. In 2023, roughly three-quarters (73%) of football fans were concerned by the volume of gambling advertising and sponsorship related to football. Two-thirds (66%) opposed the commercial relationship between football and gambling (Anon. 2023; Kayed 2024). Sky Bet’s campaign, then, was clearly not ‘for the fans’.

Sky Bet’s advert – one of hundreds of gambling references within any football game (Purves et al. 2020, 74) – demonstrates how the self-regulating gambling industry capitalises on football sponsorship. It emphasises the importance of the gambling strand in our project, which will historicise how the industry’s commercial power has increased since the 1960s and accelerated in the early twenty-first century.

Figure 2: Stoke-on-Trent, UK. Photographer/Credit: Jason Charters.

Although sports-related gambling has existed for centuries (Ashton 1898, 173-210; Clapson 1992, 1-14), our project explores how gambling companies have gradually infiltrated the sports sponsorship market since the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act legalised betting shops. The 2005 Gambling Act, which legalised radio and television advertising for most gambling firms, marks another notable tipping point. It provided the gambling industry with the ‘green light’ to invest heavily in sponsorship deals and allowed professional sports to seek out and enter into partnerships with the commercial gambling sector. As portrayed via the Sky Bet campaign, sports-related marketing played, and still plays, on British identity to encourage everyday gambling.Conclusion

This blog offers a flavour of the themes that will be explored in ‘Kicking the Habit’ through archival research and oral history interviews. Over the coming years, the project will investigate the motives underlying the commercial partnerships between professional sports and addictive industries. It will assess the impacts, including the harm to individuals and attitudes towards the industries. The project will evaluate how the government and the industries have attempted to regulate sports sponsorship and how this has changed over time. Finally, it will address how the history of sports sponsorship can help us understand and meet the challenges posed by the ongoing commercial partnerships between sports and addictive industries. In doing so, the project speaks to several broader themes within contemporary British History.

If you are interested in following our research as it develops, consider following us on X/Twitter [KtHabitProject], Instagram [KtHabitProject], Bluesky [KtHabitProject.blue.social] or Facebook [Kicking-the-Habit-Project]. You can also contact the project team directly, via our email: kickingthehabitproject@gmail.com

Although the ‘Kicking the Habit’ Project primarily explores the history of sports sponsorship in Britain, we appreciate that some of the issues and themes addressed may affect people today. If you feel affected by any of the issues raised, the following websites and organisations may be able to offer information, help, and support.https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/alcohol-support/ https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/quit-smoking/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/gambling-addiction/

Jamie is a historian and Research Fellow based in the Department of Public Health, Environments and Society at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Along with Alex, he is currently researching the proliferation of alcohol sponsorship in Scottish football during the 1980s.

Dan is a Research Associate who works at the University of Nottingham. He is interested in the histories of consumerism, health, and business. In collaboration with Anna, he is currently examining how sponsorship by the tobacco industry proliferated within motor racing from the 1970s until 2005.

Fabiola is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, where she and Heather are researching the gambling industry’s sports sponsorship. She is a historian of (un)healthy industries, advertising, patient(-consumers), mass media, and stigma. She has published on maternal mental illness and tanning culture, including her first book, The Rise and Fall of the Sunbed.

Anna is a Professor of Health History at the University of Nottingham. She is the author of many books and articles and is currently working on twentieth and twenty-first-century health consumerism. Working with Dan, her first research focus within Kicking the Habit involves examining the evolving relationship between British F1, politics and tobacco sponsorship during the 1970s and 1980s.

Alex is a Professor of Public Health History at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She has published widely on the history of public health in the UK and is particularly interested in the history of substance use. Alex is working with Jamie on the alcohol strand of the Kicking the Habit project.

Heather is a Professor of Gambling Research and Policy at the University of Glasgow and co-directs Gambling Research Glasgow. She was co-chair of the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling. Her first book, Games without Frontiers, focused on the social and historical intersection of games and gambling.

References

Anon. 1989. “Health row as Tennent’s win the Cup”. The Herald. 29 July. 188-9.

Anon. 2003. “Old Firm sign new sponsorship deal”. The Guardian. 3 January. Accessed 16 January 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/jan/03/newsstory.sport4

Anon. 2023. “National supporters’ survey 2023: more stats’”. Football Supporters Association. 2 August. Accessed 14 November 2024. https://thefsa.org.uk/news/national-supporters-survey-2023-more-stats/

Anon. 2024a. “BAT and McLaren racing announce multi-year partnership extension”. British American Tobacco. 8 April. Accessed 14 November 2024. www.bat.com/media/press-releases/_2024/april/bat-mclaren-racing-announce-multi-year-partnership-extension

Anon. 2024b. “Health campaigners criticise SPFL for Carling cponsorship deal”. BBC News. 7 October. Accessed 14 November 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kl233lr5o

Anon. 2024c. “Sky Bet trim”. Best Ads onTV.com. 7 June. Accessed 15 November 2024.  https://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/163812/Sky-Bet-Trim

Ashton, John. 1898. The History of Gambling in England. London: Duckworth & Co.

Clapson, Mark. 1992. A Bit of Flutter: Popular Gambling in England, c.1820-1961. Manchester University Press.

Collins, Tony and Wray Vamplew. 2002. Mud, Sweat and Beers: A Cultural History of Sport and Alcohol. Oxford: Berg.

Crampsey, Bob. 1990. The First 100 Years: The Scottish Football League. Glasgow: Scottish Football League.

Greenwood, Anna, Alex Mold and Heather Wardle. 2023. “Unhealthy histories: sports and addictive sponsorship”. The Lancet 401 (10370), 18-19.

Kayed, Viktor. 2024. “Majority of sports fans concerned over amount of gambling ads”. SBCNews. 2 July. Accessed 14 November 2024. https://sbcnews.co.uk/marketing/2024/07/02/majority-of-sports-fans-concerned-over-the-amount-of-gambling-ads/

Lee, Christian. 2024. “Operators walk the regulatory tightrope in euro 2024 promotions”. Gambling TV. 19 July. Accessed 14 November 2024. https://gamblingtv.com/featured/2024/07/19/operators-walk-the-regulatory-tightrope-in-euro-2024-promotions/

Lincoln, Edward. 1968. Letter to A.B. Oscroft. 4 November. Box D15a, John Player Advertising Archive.

O’Neill, Daniel, and Anna Greenwood. 2022. “‘Bringing you the best’: John Player & Sons, cricket and the politics of tobacco sport sponsorship, 1969-1986”. European Journal of the History of Medicine & Health 80 (1), 152-84.

Polley, Martin. 1988. Moving the Goal Posts: a history of sport and society since 1945. London: Routledge.

Purves, Richard I., Nathan Critchlow, Amber Morgan, Martine Stead, and Fiona Dobbie. 2020. “Examining the frequency and nature of gambling marketing in televised broadcasts of professional sporting events in the United Kingdom”. Public Health 184, 71-8.

The Betting and Gaming Act. 1960. 25 (2), 149.

Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002. Accessed 14 November 2024. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/36

Wardle, Heather, Nathan Critchlow, Ashley Brown, Craig Donnachie, Alexey Kolsenikov, and

Kate Hunt. 2022. “The association between gambling markets and unplanned spend: Synthesised findings from two online cross-sectional surveys”. Addictive Behaviours 135.