Sports and Booze

When you give up drinking, one of the first things you notice is how much beer and alcohol are advertised.  It's a shocking amount.  On most sporting events, at least half of the ads are for beer, liquor or restaurants who serve copious amounts of both.

Sports and booze are long time allies.  Ever since the beginnings of baseball, the oldest of the popular commoner viewing draws, owners of teams realized if you sold beer at games, you could make a mint.  When the first sports were broadcast on the fledgling radio networks of yore, alcohol and smokes were amongst the earliest of sponsors, and with player, coach, and announcer endorsement deals, it's really hard today to see where the sports line ends and the encouraged drinking line begins.

Beer particularly has an extremely cozy relationship with sports in all of it's viewed/listened to forms.   If you watch many of today's ads, you will see an association; beer equates with being "a good fan," "helping your team get the win," or "the only way to celebrate a victory."  It's very blatant.  "If you want to support your team, or if you want your team to win, you need to drink!"  And the imagery of how much you should drink is distorted by the insistence, "every time I buy a round, my team starts to win."

Even when the sport is left out of the message of the liquor ad (still played during the game, mind you), beer, wine and liquor are portrayed as the only way "real men" celebrate.  "Are you a lonely loser, out of shape with no chance of getting a girlfriend anytime soon?  Well, knock back a shot of this tequila, grab a party cooler of a specific type of beer, or chill this kind of wine and men will look up to you and women will be putty in your hands."  Watch the ads yourself.  Many of them have that exact theme.

What is scary is the way the sports leagues and the liquor advertisers clearly don't care about being a safe and responsible drinker anymore.  Their message is the same; drink, drink, drink!  They know if people think they can enjoy a sport without being drunk as a skunk, they might not get that 9th beer, or 5th shot.  They might decide to not get that 3rd pitcher, or crack open that 4th bottle of wine.  The liquor industry can't have that, so "keep drinking!"

Even the lame excuse of corporate morality, the "remember: don't drink and drive" message at the end of beer and liquor ads was deemed too much of a drinking buzzkill.  Now, you get such pithy statements as, "great beer, great responsibility." What the F- does that mean?  Why don't they say, "for God's sake, do not drink too much and get behind the wheel of a car."  The reason is they don't care.  The liquor industry doesn't care about stopping drinking and driving, as long as they get their money.  They'll feign intolerance and being pro upstanding individual, all while hiding behind the argument, "we're just the liquor industry.  We can't be held accountable when someone, after we tell them to drink, drink, drink, after we tell them it's the only way to be a 'real' man, after we tell them they will no longer be wanting for companionship if you drink our product, and after we tell them you really don't support your favorite team unless you drink more of our product, over and over and over again, plows into a minivan, drunk, and kills three kids.  That was them, not us!  We just want everyone to be shnockered all of the time without acknowledging the consequences of encouraging such reckless behavior."

Two final thoughts.  1) The liquor industry is so powerful, they no longer allow for any public criticism of their product, outside of a church.  2) No other addictive product in the world could ever get away with marketing themselves to the masses, especially kids, like beer/liquor does.