Since then, strict no-smoking policies have been adopted at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, with a total no-smoking policy in place since 2010. Smoking is prohibited at Paris 2024 venues except in designated areas, and this rule applies to e-cigarettes as well.
Alcoholic beverage companies are another category of controversial Olympic sponsors, from Molson Brewery at the 1976 Montreal Olympics to Heineken at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The IOC has a partnership with AB InBev, one of the world’s largest brewers, but the global beer sponsor for the Paris Olympics is non-alcoholic beverage Corona Cerro, which the Olympic Committee said underlines the two organisations’ “commitment to responsible consumption and a better world”.
Initiatives like the “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport” campaign don’t come out of nowhere. Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the 2012 London Olympics, which featured a variety of promotional activities focused on youth participation, faced significant backlash. And in 2021, the company’s sponsorship changed, and Coca-Cola now has a joint “Olympic Partner,” or TOP, deal with Chinese dairy company Mengniu to be the exclusive sponsor of non-alcoholic drinks at the Olympics. (The TOP program is the highest level of sponsorship for the Olympics.)
“Coca-Cola has a good relationship with the dairy companies and gets the ‘health benefits’ that come with it,” says Joe Piggin, a senior lecturer in sports policy at Loughborough University. So while a co-sponsorship might seem to make Coca-Cola’s funding less important, strategically the move is actually one that leverages the company’s sponsorship and future longevity.
From 2021 to 2032 (when the contract expires), the co-sponsors will pay the IOC a total of $3 billion. Coca-Cola’s roster of 14 athletes was announced for the 2024 Olympics. The face of the campaign is this image of athletes holding Coca-Cola beverage bottles. Some athletes are holding full-sugar Coca-Cola itself, which contains 53 grams of sugar per 500 milliliters, nearly double the recommended daily sugar intake for adults.
Many of the athletes are reaching for another Coca-Cola drink, Powerade Original, which contains 5.8 grams of sugar per 600-milliliter bottle, nearly 20 percent of the recommended daily intake. (Powerade is also the official drink of the U.S. Olympic team.)
Experts say the marketing tactic is similar to the way past Olympians marketed cigarettes. A recent project by the Center for Tobacco and Society looked into this, pointing out that a 1935 Saturday Evening Post ad quoted high diving champion Harold “Dutch” Smith as saying, “Camels don’t fart.”
“If a tobacco company tried to run a commercial on TV during the Olympics, there would be an uproar — so would Coca-Cola,” Lustig says. (“Coca-Cola offers a wide range of beverage options, including dairy and juice drinks, water, tea, coffee and soda, including many sugar-free options,” an IOC spokesperson told WIRED.)
“We call on sports organisations to stop promoting unhealthy foods and drinks and work with health experts to create healthier food environments,” Action on Sugar nutritionist Zoe Davis said in a statement to WIRED.
Coca-Cola did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. “The company is using its own front groups to push the argument that lack of physical activity, not sugary drinks, is the cause of the obesity crisis,” says Ashka Naik, a researcher at Corporate Responsibility. But Coke has been criticized for manipulating science to justify this shift in responsibility.
Experts WIRED spoke to have consistently said that Coca-Cola should be the next Olympic sponsor, but they don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.
Many experts suggest change shouldn’t be left to the organisations themselves. “Public policy action” is needed to stop sports organisations “taking money from ultra-processed food companies”, Lustig said. “When you have more votes than money, things will change.”
