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Alcohol

Introduction
There is little doubt that when it comes to sports, kids and teens are major league fans, outdoing adults in loyalty to the teams they love. A U.S. study conducted in 2001 found that 93 % of youth people between the ages of eight and 17 view sports on TV, and close to one third use some kind of sports media daily (TV, videogames, magazines, newspapers, the Internet or radio). And it's not just the boys who are fans. Although they consume the greatest amounts of sports media (97 percent), at 89 %, the girls aren't far behind (Kids, 2001).
A Harris Youth Sports Report in 1999 found that 29 % of kids say they are diehard fans of the National Basketball Association (NBA) games, compared with only 14% of adults (Woods, 2001). And according to the NFL's senior communications director, "Among our most avid fans, 69% said they were fans of the NFL by the time they were 12 (Alcohol Advertising, 2003)."
Given the interest and passion young people bring to the sports they play and watch, it's easy to understand why there are ethical concerns when companies for adult-oriented products, such as alcohol, use sports to reach audiences (Media Awareness, 2005).
The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth's own research has demonstrated that overall alcohol advertising on televised sports programming in 2003 was more likely to be seen by adults than youth: youth make up 13.3% of the national television viewing population but on average only 9.1% of the audience for televised sports with alcohol advertising. In most cases the youth share of the audience for this advertising was lower than the proportion of youth in the television viewing population. However, for 16.5% of alcohol ad placements on televised sports ($47.1 million worth of advertising spending), the youth share of the audience was higher than the proportion of youth in the overall television viewing population (Alcohol Advertising, 2003).
Alcohol companies are also huge sports fans. In 2003...