Cricket Australia facing tobacco advertising fines

Cricket Australia is potentially facing fines of up to $66,000 from Australian health authorities after displaying Hindi advertisements from an Indian tobacco company at during Test cricket matches over the summer.

Although the advertisements were promoting mouthwash, it has been claimed that the majority of Indians who would have seen the sign on television would immediately associate the brand with chewing tobacco.

The advertising of tobacco products is banned in Australia and India.

According to Action on Smoking and Health Australia Chief Executive Anne Jone, Indian tobacco companies allegedly get around these laws by engaging in "brand stretching", in which they market non-tobacco products to give exposure to their brand, which is widely associated with tobacco.

The Federal Health Department wrote to Cricket Australia at the beginning of February, following which a decision was made to cancel the advertisements for the remainder of the series, leading, according to News Ltd, a revenue gap of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Identifying this issue in their latest enewsletter, risk managers Reliance Risk suggest that "this incident demonstrates the need for event organisers to consider the risks associated with major sources of income and the potential for any financial loss associated with them." RiskSense identify potential scenarios as including:

• Sponsorship withdrawal;
• A major act, athlete or drawcard withdraws from an event;
• An event is cancelled or postponed through force majeure, or some other foreseeable or unforeseeable events;
• Poor economic conditions or ineffective marketing affecting pre-sales on tickets
• Bad weather affects gate ticket sales.

Reliance Risk add that "in the same way that event risk assessments should consider threats to operations of an event, those responsible for the event's finance should undertake a similar exercise to consider and mitigate against the above scenarios."

For more information go to www.reliancerisk.com.au

20th August 2011 - ARGUS REVIEW RECOMMENDS MAJOR OVERHAUL OF ELITE CRICKET