OLYMPIC IDEA DROWNS IN BEER
Addressed to:
Thomas Bach
President,
International Olympic Committee
Dear Mr. Bach,
We all want to see our children healthy and happy. People care deeply about thriving children who grow up in safe and healthy environments to live up to their fullest potential. “Building a better world through sport” is the IOC vision, where sport is meant to serve humankind.
But the world’s children are not thriving. And the deal between the IOC and Big Alcohol is harming the young generation.
Alcohol causes significant harm to children globally. It ranks as the second biggest risk factor for illness among kids aged 10-24 and as the primary risk factor for death and disease among young people aged 25-49.
The biggest reason for this massive alcohol harm hurting our children is the profit maximization agenda of alcohol companies. Children around the world are massively exposed to marketing from alcohol companies. They seek to exploit children’s developmental vulnerability to gain consumers for their addictive and carcinogenic products early on. The alcohol industry makes huge profits from marketing alcohol directly to children.
In 2020, the “UNICEF-World Health Organization-Lancet Commission on the Future of the World’s Children” identified two existential threats to the health and well-being of the world’s children: the climate emergency and predatory commercial exploitation, such as marketing of alcohol and tobacco.
In addition to the harm alcohol companies are causing with their products and practices, the alcohol industry has a horrible human rights track record. Anheuser Busch InBev engages in unethical and predatory practices around the world.
That is why it is deeply troubling that the International Olympic Committee under your leadership is providing a massive platform for the beer giant to reach children with harmful messages, promoting harmful products.
Allowing alcohol marketing during the Olympic Games means to allow and facilitate the exploitation of millions of children and young people, by an alcohol company that is already causing serious harm to people and communities worldwide. It means that Olympic sports won’t serve humanity, but instead will help a giant alcohol company to continue exploiting children.
Children have a fundamental right to be protected from harm, including predatory corporate behavior by alcohol companies, such as Anheuser Busch InBev, the world’s largest beer producer.
According to the IOC Charter, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind…” Clearly, making the Olympics into a platform for the alcohol industry to reach billions of children with harmful marketing is antithetical to this goal.
The IOC’s own stated marketing mission is to “not accept commercial associations with products that may conflict with or be considered inappropriate to the mission of the IOC or to the spirit of Olympism.”
We call on you and the IOC and all national Olympic Committees to live up to that responsibility and to place the future of our children before the profit greed of alcohol companies.
We call on you and the IOC to reverse the decision to turn the Olympics into an alcohol marketing bonanza.
Protecting children from exposure to alcohol marketing means protecting the health and rights of children, and it means promoting the full development of our children in safe and enabling environments. It means serving humanity.
Sincerely,
Kristina Sperkova
International President,
Movendi International
Stockholm, March 01, 2024
Download
Download the official open letter (PDF)
For further reading
Read more about how harmful the deal between the IOC and Big Alcohol to allow alcohol marketing during the Olympics Games is for the world’s children.
Find out about the track record of unethical and predatory business practices of Anheuser Busch InBev.
And learn more about how alcohol marketing harms children in general and why alcohol companies are targeting kids.
And see the growing case library of unethical practices of alcohol companies.
