Background: Sponsorship of elite sports provides a compelling avenue for unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling companies to promote their products, allowing them to advertise with relatively few restrictions and to reach a highly-engaged mass audience, including children and young adults. Exposure to branded sponsorship is known to influence preferences and behaviours in relation to food and beverages, and emerging evidence suggests that gambling sponsorship of sport may be particularly harmful to vulnerable groups.
Aim: To assess the extent and nature of unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling marketing during the highest rating sporting event in Australia in 2017—the AFL Grand Final.
Method: Using an existing coding framework, a content analysis of a digital recording of the 2017 AFL Grand Final television broadcast will be undertaken to identify episodes of unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling marketing. Episodes will be coded if clearly visible for at least one second, and the time each episode remains visible will be recorded to the nearest second. The brand, product type, and nature (e.g. fixed, dynamic, commercial break or integrated advertising) of each episode will also be coded. The broadcast will be double-coded by two of the researchers and any discrepancies in coding reviewed together until consensus is reached.
Results: Data collection is in progress and results will be available for presentation at the conference. Descriptive statistics will be used to present the frequency and nature of unhealthy food, alcohol and gambling marketing during the game and the total proportion of game time the marketing was present.
Conclusion: Findings from this study will provide important data on the volume of marketing for ‘risky’ products that viewers are exposed to while watching popular sporting events, and the types of marketing strategies that are most commonly used in this setting, to help inform public policy advocacy efforts.