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Wednesday, 23 July 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
What do you call it when a national sports body responsible for the biggest sporting revenue and exposure ignores national law and flouts national policy?
The ongoing tour of Sri Lanka by the South African cricket team is sponsored – not merely financially supported but title sponsored – by ‘Royal Stag Cricket Gear’. Anyone with any conscious thought in South Asia knows Royal Stag – a popular alcohol product in India – is engaging in surrogate advertising to promote brand recognition and ‘top of mind’ awareness.
The notional ban in India is compelling alcohol producing and marketing companies to move to integrated marketing communications using the vehicle of cable TV and the mechanism of event sponsorship to promote their brand. Even some of the biggest names in the Indian entertainment industry are climbing on the bandwagon in spite of the ethical/moral dilemma this poses.
When a famous Indian actor urges us to “make it large,” he is not, presumably, merely pushing a cream to enhance the physical dimensions of a member of the male anatomy. Unless, that is, Royal Stag has further diversified its range of products.
In Sri Lanka, a certain brewer once was reputedly banned from producing and marketing a brand of soda/mineral water that was to bear the same name as its alcoholic product. That was ostensibly under the NATA Act which is quite unambiguous in its scope and ambit as to direct and surrogate advertising.
A few calls to sports stores in Colombo and elsewhere in Sri Lanka will demonstrate that there is no brand of cricketing equipment called Royal Stag or anything remotely similar on offer. That, however, is beside the point. Even if the said Royal Stag does purport to produce cricket gear of any sort, it is against the spirit and letter of the law – i.e. the NATA Act – to market it locally.
But, there is a loophole. If Johnny Strider (an imaginary multinational alcohol producer) wants to market its name advertising a non-existent brand of shoes in Sri Lanka by sponsoring the national volleyball or elle tournament and air it globally via ‘Eleven Sporting Channel’ via cable, it can with impunity. It does not legally matter if the national board sanctions it and a national TV station also carries it for a few dollars more.
This takes one beyond strict legality to the highly moralistic national policy known as a ‘full stop to intoxicants’. Everyone in Sri Lanka knows that illicit intoxicants and drugs including alcohol are being imported/mass produced and sold by the truckload with the seeming patronage of the connected and the influential.
The licit alcohol producers have to deal with a mass of regulatory controls and taxes which stifle their legitimate business, adversely affect State revenue and are compelled to indirectly promote the illicit alcohol market for purely economic reasons referable to the inferior buying power of the average Sri Lankan consumer. This so-called policy is regrettably adhered to mostly in the breach.
Add to this a national sports body permitting an Indian brand of alcohol (sorry, notional sports equipment) to sponsor our most visible and prestigious international sporting representation, is deplorable.
Despite one of our sporting heroes’ professed admiration for a certain brand of Indian alcohol in the foreign media, the sight of our National Cricket Captain facing the press surrounded by advertisements for Indian alcohol is almost a national disgrace. By comparison, the South African skipper who refused to wear alcohol-related branding on his clothing for personal religious reasons is hailed as a principled person – rightly so.
This is a somewhat disturbing phenomenon which should be addressed by the grandees of Government and the overactive but misdirected anti-intoxicant lobby.
Nishan Muthukrishna
Attorney-at-Law
