Kick Coke Out of the Olympics? The Full Story Behind the Boycott of Big Soda’s Billion-Dollar Sponsorship
The campaign states that “Big Soda” — the soft drink industry giants represented by Coca-Cola and Pepsi — use sponsorship of major sporting events to associate their brands with the thrill of competitive sport and beloved athletes. Yet in reality, the sugary drinks they produce are harming our health and our environment.
In the campaign’s promotional video, a young person spits out the mouthful of cola in one go and cries out: “Hey, Big Soda! I’m not buying your sportswashing through sports sponsorship.” The campaign calls on the International Olympic Committee to terminate its sponsorship contract with The Coca-Cola Company and to partner only with brands that align with the traditional values of the Olympics.
I. “Big Soda”: The Tobacco of a New Era?
Around 2010, the concept of “Big Soda” was coined by the media and by public-interest organisations advocating for health and the environment. Modelled on the terms “Big Oil” and “Big Tobacco”, it highlights the harm caused by sugary drinks such as Coca-Cola and raises the alarm about the immense influence soft drink giants wield in commerce and policy lobbying.
Among the string of challenges mounted against “Big Soda” in recent years, the campaign “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport”, which targets the company’s Olympic sponsorship rights, has undeniably been the loudest. The move also evokes the anti-tobacco movement and tobacco advertising’s eventual withdrawal from sport — in 1988, after years of global advocacy for a smoking ban, a Winter Olympics held in Canada rejected tobacco sponsorship for the first time, and tobacco advertising has since been absent from the Olympic stage.
“Fizzy drinks are the new tobacco for young people.” So wrote Chris van Tulleken, an infectious diseases doctor at University College Hospital, London, and author of Ultra-Processed People, in a column for the Daily Mail. He argues that Coca-Cola should be barred from sponsoring the Olympics, just as cigarette companies were once barred from sponsoring the Games.
The “Kick Big Soda Out of Sport” campaign shares this goal. In a tweet posted on 31 July, they said: “Hey, Big Soda, remember when Big Tobacco got kicked out of sports sponsorship? Next up is you. Game over. Take your sugary drinks out of sport.”
As of 5 August, more than 100,000 people had signed the petition, and over 70 organisations had become campaign partners, including leading health bodies such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the NCD Alliance (NCDA), and Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL).
In a statement, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that having Coca-Cola sponsor the world’s largest and most important sporting event is deeply contentious, “Athletes from around the world spend years training to reach peak condition for the Olympic season. Their strength, stamina and endurance clearly do not come from fizzy drinks.”
II. Why Is Big Soda So Eager to Win the Sports Industry’s Endorsement?
A growing body of scientific research shows that consumption of sugary drinks such as Coca-Cola is a significant driver of rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease worldwide. A 2013 study examined the association between soft drink consumption and overweight, obesity and type 2 diabetes across 75 countries. The results showed that, with diet, income, urbanisation and age held constant, every 1% increase in soft drink consumption adds 3 overweight adults, 2.3 obese adults and 0.3 adults with diabetes per 100 adults.
Faced with compelling scientific evidence, clever “Big Soda” companies have chosen to exploit sports events to sportswash the health harms of their sugary drinks.
In 2018, a paper in the journal BMC Public Health found that people exposed to promotions for unhealthy food brands while watching a sporting event are more likely to associate the event with the brand. Further research has found that when a food product is endorsed by a professional athlete, parents perceive it as healthier and are more likely to purchase it.
Coca-Cola has been doing exactly this. On its website, Coca-Cola declares: “We love supporting the things our consumers care about. Our consumers tell us they are passionate about sport, and especially about the world’s premier sporting event — the Olympic Games.” From sponsoring the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to 2032, when its current contract expires, Coca-Cola’s partnership with the Olympics will span more than a century.
According to the marketing news site Marketing Brew, Coca-Cola surged in 2023 to become the brand sponsoring the most sporting events, surpassing even Nike, with around $5 billion invested in advertising and marketing.
The dividends of tying Big Soda to sporting events are plain to see.
Surveys show that during the 2008 Olympics, American viewers had higher awareness of the brands that spent the most on sponsorship, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. During the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Coca-Cola’s Facebook following grew by 2.5 million, outpacing every other sponsor. At the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the three most popular adverts all came from fizzy drink brands: Pepsi, Gatorade (a PepsiCo brand) and Coca-Cola.
Beyond sponsoring top-tier international sporting events and teams, Big Soda also pours enormous sums each year into hiring elite sports stars as brand ambassadors. Among the endorsement portfolios in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2010 list of the 100 Most Influential Athletes, food and beverages ranked as the second-largest sponsorship category after sports equipment and sportswear.
Yet top athletes who are aware of the harms of sugary drinks have begun saying no to Big Soda. In 2020, at a UEFA European Championship press conference, the celebrated footballer Cristiano Ronaldo pushed aside the two bottles of Coca-Cola in front of him, picked up a bottle of still water from the table and said simply: “Water.”
III. “Big Soda” and Environmental Justice
According to a report published last year by Greenpeace (Greenpeace), Coca-Cola alone produces 100 billion single-use plastic beverage bottles every year, and many of them end up in landfills and oceans. “Coca-Cola’s iconic red bottle is increasingly becoming a symbol of environmental harm.”
Also in 2023, the New York Times reported on plastic pollution in the Buffalo River in New York State, much of which came from PepsiCo products — familiar brands such as Pepsi and Lay’s crisps.
In 2014, Bartow J. Elmore, professor of world environmental history at Ohio State University, published Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism), a book that meticulously documents how Coca-Cola used a peculiar business model to build a vast cola supply chain at minimal cost.
The Coca-Cola Company sells only its syrup; distributors around the world are responsible for adding water to create the finished product, thereby relentlessly appropriating natural and public resources — including water and transport infrastructure — and provoking fierce resistance in water-scarce, impoverished regions such as Saudi Arabia and India.
The good news is that governments in several countries have begun to curb the harm Big Soda inflicts on public health and the environment — to date, nations including France, Hungary and Malaysia, as well as some US states and cities, have started imposing a sugar-sweetened beverage tax. Yet the lobbying power of Big Soda remains formidable.
In 2012, Michael Bloomberg, then mayor of New York City, backed a proposal to restrict the sale of sugary drinks. The proposal required that sugary soft drinks sold in restaurants, cinemas and sports venues be limited to no more than 470 millilitres per serving. It was opposed by beverage companies including PepsiCo, restaurants, and some civil rights groups funded by Big Soda brands. In 2013, the New York State Supreme Court overturned the proposal, citing insufficient legal basis.
A 2016 article on the Advertising Age (Advertising Age) website noted that Big Soda’s conduct in resisting legislation targeting fizzy drinks closely mirrored the tactics long employed by the tobacco and alcohol industries. That same year, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo had even funded at least 96 health-sector organisations, finding that “the soda giants cultivate ties with health organisations to build a positive image for their brands”.
– The Petition –
Dear International Olympic Committee,
Sugary drinks are harming people and the planet. By accepting billions of dollars in sponsorship from Coca-Cola, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is implicitly endorsing a world in which harm to health and the environment is “sportswashed”, undermining its promise to build a better world through sport. The harms are as follows:
◉ Harm to health
Sugary drinks are a leading cause of rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. As long as Coca-Cola remains a sponsor, how does the IOC intend to honour its commitment to the World Health Organization to promote healthy societies through sport, advance Sustainable Development Goal 3 (“Good Health and Well-being”), and prevent non-communicable diseases?
◉ Harm to the environment
Plastic pollution, carbon emissions and water depletion are critical global challenges and key drivers of the climate crisis. As long as Coca-Cola remains a sponsor, how does the IOC intend to honour its commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change?
◉ Advertising targeting our next generation
Exposure to marketing of unhealthy food is a major risk factor for childhood obesity. As long as Coca-Cola remains a sponsor, how does the IOC intend to protect children from marketing of unhealthy products while honouring its commitments to youth fitness and health?
As the leader and guardian of the values of the Olympic Movement, the IOC has a duty to put the health and well-being of people and the planet above the corporate interests of Big Soda companies.
1. Terminate Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Olympic Games.
2. Commit never to accept sponsorship from companies that harm public health and the environment.
3. Accept sponsorship only from companies that genuinely align with Olympic values — those that promote health and sustainability.
By kicking Big Soda out of the Olympic Games, the IOC will show the world that it is not merely talking about these values but is truly committed to making the world a better place through sport.
Editor: Zeen