This week, the Australian Open is pitting the stars of tennis against each other, drawing an international audience of over 20 million people.  

The National Alliance for Action on Alcohol has raised concerns about the presence of Jacob’s Creek, Coopers and others as official alcohol sponsors of the biggest tennis event in Australia, as a recent study has linked alcohol advertising to our youth drinking problem across Australia.  

The alliance co-chair, Michael Moore, said “The takeaway from this research is that marketing of alcohol is out of control and it’s time for us to recognise the harm that’s occurring.”  

The spotlight’s on the Aussie Open -- so we have an opportunity to pressure it to do the right thing and drop its alcohol sponsors. But the Aussie Open will only hear us if you add your voice now.



Tell the Australian Open to drop its alcohol sponsors 

Alcohol promoters are using social media to circumvent existing regulations to specifically target young people, showing the industry’s attitude towards existing laws. If the government won’t enforce the law, we need to put pressure on institutions like the Aussie Open to drop all alcohol sponsorship from their events, and help enforce sensible, existing legislation.  

The alcohol lobby are experts at exploiting regulatory loopholes that allow advertising to be shown during televised sporting events. It’s up to us to publicly call out organisations the Australian Open to drop alcohol companies as sponsors. In the age of social media and online activism, the power lies with us, not with them.  

It’s happened before: the banning of tobacco advertising has shown that it’s possible to phase out lucrative sponsors from televised sporting events. Where at one time it looked impossible, it’s now unthinkable to have tobacco products promoted alongside sporting events.  

After nearly 100,000 SumOfUs members around the world took action last year, Coca-Cola slashed its funding to the Trump-led Republican National Convention last year. Our power lies in our numbers: if the SumOfUs community come together with one voice, together we have enough power to tell the Australian Open to do the right thing and drop its alcohol sponsors.

Let's not ignore the evidence: alcohol advertising has no place in sport