When Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo slid two bottles of Coca-Cola off camera and raised a bottle of water to toast his hundreds of millions of social media followers during a news conference in 2021, he prompted a $4 billion drop in the soda giant’s market value.
“Such is the power of sport,” write public health advocates Trish Cotter and Sandra Mullin in an editorial published this week in the BMJ Global Health. They urge the International Olympic Committee to cut its financial ties to Coca-Cola and stop using its power to push sugary beverages that are linked to rising global rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.
“In the interest of health for all, promoting unhealthy sugary drinks clearly has no place in sport,” write Cotter and Mullin, who work for Vital Strategies, a nonprofit global health organization. “Despite the evidence of health harm and the contradiction to the IOC’s mission to champion athletes’ health, Coca-Cola remains a top-tier sponsor of the Olympic Games.”
In 2023, Coca-Cola had more active sponsorship agreements than any other brand, including a multi-billion-dollar deal with the IOC, the editorial says
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