FARE; Foundation for Alcohol Research & Education; June 10 2026; Editorial
It’s World Cup season – avid fans are up at all hours to catch a match, gathering together or watching online. It’s a moment that fosters community and inspires passion and joy. But with major alcohol sponsors including Diageo and Heineken, it’s also stacked with alcohol ads. Across codes, sports promotion is inseparable from addictive and harmful products like alcohol.
The alcohol industry has made a deliberate and calculated choice to ingrain its products in Australia’s beloved sporting culture. Alcohol ads are on television ad breaks, jerseys, stadiums and marketed as a mainstay of any sport experience whether celebrating or commiserating. Evidence shows that advertising influences alcohol use. When children are exposed to alcohol ads, they are more likely to start drinking earlier and go on to drink at high-risk levels later in life.
Alcohol use also intensifies and exacerbates domestic, family and sexual violence. It is a major contributing factor to domestic and family violence across the country, involved in up to half of police-reported incidents. Sports shape our culture. When harmful ideas about masculinity, alcohol and aggression are reinforced through this influence, violence becomes easier to excuse, dismiss, and perpetuate.
Ending alcohol ads on TV during sport
Actor and Lived Experience Advisor Kym Valentine has been on our television screens for more than 40 years. She knows first-hand the power television has to create norms and forge associations that stay with us for a lifetime. “When we connect the things we value most to a product that is one of the leading causes of harm and death, we risk turning our greatest vice into a cultural virtue,” she said.
Survivor Advocate Kym Valentine
“In Australia, where televised sport is a national religion, the link between the game we love and alcohol is deeply engrained.” Alcohol ads cannot be shown on TV most times that children are likely watching, with one glaring exception – sport. Generally, alcohol ads can only be aired from 8.30pm to 5am or 12pm – 3pm on school days.
However, a loophole in the rules means alcohol ads can be shown anytime on weekends and public holidays during a sports broadcast. Even when thousands of children are watching. This happens because the rules that decide when and how alcohol ads appear on free‑to‑air TV are written by the commercial broadcasters who profit from them — channels Seven, Nine, Ten and WIN.
When the rules are written by the industry that make money from them, they prioritise their bottom line not the community’s wellbeing. The status quo has left us with flimsy regulation that fails to safeguard the community. Australia’s media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has the power – and responsiblity – to change this and prevent thousands of children being exposed to alcohol ads every weekend. ACMA is currently reviewing the rules around alcohol ads on TV. It has received dozens of submissions from public health, children and family violence organisations, and community members who want to see change.
If ACMA agrees that the current system isn’t safeguarding the community, it can take regulation back into its own hands by creating what is called a ‘program standard’, rather than letting the industry continue to set their own rules. ACMA has a responsibility to the community it serves to ensure the rules around alcohol ads on TV put health and wellbeing first. It’s a simple, straightforward step that would mean we can all watch sport on TV without harmful ads.