It has the glamour, it’s flashy. It represents traditional masculinity. It stands for speed and excitement. And it can count on the eyes of a large global audience. “In short: it is the ideal sport to sponsor. It was made to sell cigarettes.” In the mid-1980s, Barrie Gill, a major motorsport sponsorship strategist, articulated why Formula 1 was so well suited to the tobacco industry. At that time, cigarette brands were still prominently featured on racing cars and driver uniforms. Despite a later ban on investments and advertising, the link between the motorsport and tobacco industries was never completely severed.
Thursday was to that longstanding partnership added a new episode. The Dutch Heart Foundation, the Dutch Cancer Society and the Long Fund have announced that they will be submitting a complaint to the Advertising Code Committee because of advertisements for Velo nicotine pouches that are fired at consumers around the Grand Prix in Zandvoort. The trio, united in the Health Funds Foundation for Smoke Free, finds it “impossible” that a banned and harmful product is being advertised in the Netherlands.
The competition organization of the Formula 1 race in Zandvoort says in a response on Thursday NRC “not to have any influence on the choices of their business partners and participating Formula 1 teams.”
Threshold lowering
Users place the bags, which resemble small sugar packages served with coffee, under their upper lips so that the gums and buccal mucosa absorb the nicotine quickly.
The producer of those bags, tobacco manufacturer British American Tobacco (BAT), markets the product under the Velo brand and has been working with the McLaren Formula 1 team for some time. Although it is forbidden in the Netherlands to sell or use nicotine bags, advertising is allowed. After all, the product does not fall under the Tobacco and Smoking Products Act, but under the Commodities Act, because it does not contain tobacco.
Marc Willemsen, an expert in the field of tobacco control and affiliated with the Trimbos Institute, speaks of a loophole in Dutch legislation because of a ‘definition problem’. He also sees the tobacco industry spending its massive marketing budgets on a variety of new products that fuel nicotine addiction on a global scale. “Whether it’s the e-cigarette or these nicotine pouches, they all open the doors to other tobacco products. They all lower the threshold to the traditional cigarette.”
Eye-popping amounts
According to figures from the Trimbos Institute, one in a thousand Dutch adults used the nicotine sachets last year, according to the RIVM mainly young people. As a product, the nicotine pouches are perfectly tailored to young people, says Willemsen. “The use of this nicotine powder (and not pulverized tobacco as with the Swedish snus, ed.) is more accessible at a time when social control over the physical cigarette is much greater. That while the bags with their high nicotine amounts are extremely addictive and extremely harmful to the brain, cardiovascular system and nervous system”.
The tobacco and motorsport industries have been intertwined for some time and the latter in particular generated dazzling amounts of money. Led a 2020 study by Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products (STOP), an anti-tobacco industry group, revealed that despite several bans — the World Health Organization banned tobacco advertising in 2005 — tobacco industry investment in motorsport continues. Since the foundation of Formula 1, more than 4.1 billion euros have flowed from tobacco manufacturers to motorsport. During the 2020 season, when the sport celebrated its 70th anniversary, more than €90 million was poured into Formula 1, the largest investment since 2011.
The Formula 1 sport, through the umbrella organization for motorsport Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), had nevertheless announced in 2003 that the controversial investments would end in 2006. An earlier self-imposed ban in 2001 was changed to a ‘recommendation’ that year. And, STOP claims, those investments will pay for themselves more than once. Formula 1 fans – mostly men and young people – are the tobacco industry’s favorite target.
Whether it was the baseball cards that came with the cigarette packs in the US, or shirt sponsorships in football in the last millennium. The tobacco industry has always been creative in looking for new ways to get consumers addicted to its products through the sports industry as well. But for the most part, the sporting world has succeeded in getting rid of tobacco, says Phil Chamberlain, of the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group and associated with STOP. “It makes the long-term relationship with Formula 1 a big exception.”
Chamberlain sees how both brands strongly mirror each other in terms of marketing. “As a brand, they share a message that they want to convey. It radiates strength, boldness, with masculinity as selling point. In addition, just like motorsport, tobacco manufacturers want to show how innovative they are, for example by releasing new e-cigarettes.”
Shortcut
Anti-tobacco advocacy groups are questioning ethically the way tobacco companies are using shortcuts to increase their investment in and therefore influence through sport due to the various bans. Leveraging non-traditional brands not immediately associated with tobacco is one such detour, such as the Vuse e-cigarette and Velo nicotine pouch products, both involved in BAT. According to Chamberlain, the core of their strategy is to look for twilight zones and regulatory flaws. Like with the nicotine pouches. “They know very well that the product is not technically a tobacco product. Their activities serve only one purpose: to feed that same age-old addiction.”
The racing federation FIA told the French news agency AFP last year to remain “resolutely opposed” to tobacco advertising, sticking to its 2003 recommendations and assured that all advertising complies with current laws. Yet they do not see themselves in a position to “interfere with the private commercial arrangements between the teams and their sponsors, or agency contracts.”
Also last year STOP expressed its concerns about the Netflix documentary Drive to Survive, which gave a strong push to the popularity of motorsport. In particular, the Vuse e-cigarette and Velo nicotine pouch products were eagerly exposed to the viewer. STOP saw how the documentary makers, consciously or not, offered tobacco giants a marketing tool to circumvent the advertising bans — also via archive footage, where the advertisements were still clearly visible.
It helps that Formula 1 is an international and traveling sport, says Chamberlain, which means that the regulations end up in a no man’s land and there is no clarity about what is and what is not allowed. “You have to think about it: the industry has decades of experience in the field of marketing and promotion. She knows exactly what she is doing and what she is trying to achieve. And she is very effective at that.”
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