Former Test spinner Stuart MacGill is adamant sports and sports stars should not accept money to promote food brands like KFC and McDonald’s. “I don’t think you can have any of us advertising junk food to be honest,” he told Crikey.
MacGill, who retired from Test cricket in 2008 and has been making a career in commercial radio, is particularly concerned about Test cricketers’ endorsement of KFC, which is owned by the world’s largest fast-food company, Yum Brands.
For the last eight years, KFC has been a “gold partner” of Cricket Australia, spending up to $8 million a year on marketing and promotion linked to the sport. For this it gets TV ads, endorsements from the Australian team and Channel Nine commentators, a KFC Classic Catches competition and billboards at the games. KFC also gets naming rights to the Big Bash Twenty20 competition, televised by Fox Sports, and the title of Australian cricket’s official fast food restaurant. All up, it probably pays Cricket Australia between $1 million and $2 million a year.
“The problem for me is that KFC and Cricket Australia are hitting parents where they’re vulnerable,” said MacGill, who has two young children. “Parents are already under a lot of pressure from kids to buy this stuff and when you get the Australian cricket team endorsing it you just increase that pressure. It’s just wrong in so many ways.
“Cricket Australia and KFC would say they’re promoting a healthy lifestyle, but it’s absolute tripe.”
Just before he retired, MacGill refused Cricket Australia’s instruction to take part in a TV ad for KFC. “They had just accused me publicly of being unfit and told me I would have to lose weight if I wanted to play again. And I just hit the roof. I said: “you’re telling me I’m fat and you want me to do a KFC ad? Well, you’ve got to be crazy. I’m not going to do it.'”
Australia’s elite cricketers are required to do KFC ads for free as part of their contract with Cricket Australia, and MacGill had no right to refuse. But Cricket Australia did not force the issue. “They backed off pretty quickly,” he said. “They could see that the press might say something, and if the press didn’t I would.”
MacGill also has concerns about Milo’s junior cricket program, which has been running since 1993 and has introduced 5 million young Australians to the game: “I don’t think Milo would exist any more in Australia if it weren’t for Milo cricket. It’s been the greatest marketing exercise of all time.
“It’s not even called cricket, it’s ‘Milo in2cricket’. First day they turn up they get a bat, a bag, a hat and a shirt, which are all branded Milo, then they have to wear that every time they play. It’s just a brandathon. At least it makes my kids drink milk, but I don’t really want them drinking chocolate milk, and yet we’ve got Milo in our house.”
Rob de Castella, Australia’s former world-champion marathon runner, shares MacGill’s concerns: “I certainly have major problems with sports men and women and organisations taking money from fast food or junk food companies. I had a couple of offers to do ads for fast food companies when I was an athlete and I always turned them down because I had a moral objection.
“I’d say to anyone considering it: be very conscious of the effect your endorsement is going to have on the future lives of young Australians. And it’s not just the physical consequences of obesity, it’s the social and emotional consequences as well.
“Some sportspeople don’t care. Some are driven by agents, who want their fees and commissions, like any other business. But the individuals have got to recognise they’re putting their reputation alongside something that they may not really want to be associated with.”
MacGill said today’s top young cricketers don’t even think about what they’re being asked to do: “They just know they’ve got to turn up, do what they’re told and there’s going to be lots of media.”
KFC defends its use of cricket to sell its wares. “We’re proud of our sponsorship of cricket in Australia which, aside from promoting KFC, also funds a large number of community programs across the country to encourage children to play the game and be active,” a spokesperson said. “It is a positive initiative and we are delighted to be involved.”
It also defends its high-fat, high-energy meals, telling people to think of KFC as “something which should be enjoyed as an occasional treat and as part of a balanced diet that includes exercise”.
Something which you won’t find in a KFC ad. Or the fact its Tower Burger, advertised by fast bowler Doug Bollinger and cricket commentators Bill Lawry and Tony Greig this summer, has one-third of an adult’s daily energy needs, or almost a half if you add French fries.
According to NSW Cancer Council nutritionist Kathy Chapman: “KFC has no redeeming nutritional qualities, and is full of fat and kilojoules, and is the sort of food product that displaces more nutritious foods (like a home cooked dinner of chicken and vegetables). It’s the worst of all.”
57 thoughts on “Don’t sell KFC, MacGill tells his cricketing mates”
Noodle Bar
March 9, 2011 at 4:16 pmFascinating to read the discussion and how it gets derailed. The point about multinationals (as I see it) is that they are powerful cunning unscrupulous and have no bona fide tie to the Australian community however much they pretend. Their tie is mala fide, as articulated very well by Barry and McGill. These corporations co-opt our culture to take our money and get us addicted to their toxic product from a young age. For more information about this, check out choice.com.au.
The concern about the way they have hijacked Australian sport is mainly the way they have manipulated the sports lobby into actively ensuring fast-food corporate sponsorship continues. They have also effectively captured many of those involved in community sport in the same way.
Logically, fast food of the macdonalds/kfc sort should be treated like tobacco and alcohol as it is at least as unhealthy. Logically it should only be permitted to be sold to those over 18 (although parents may buy it for their children), taxed heavily, and their advertising should be as heavily regulated.
I’ve thought all my life that junk food should be banned from school canines. The fact that it is not is insane.
Stiofan
March 9, 2011 at 4:22 pm@RHWOMBAT
You clearly have difficulty with reading as well as with reasoning!
I didn’t say anything about public health dollars. But, since you’ve raised the topic, the public purse does support “alternative medicine” and “complimentary therapies”: health funds which pay for those treatments are supported by the private health fund tax rebate.
I’ve given up waiting for a response to my question about MacGill and KFC. However, given your rapidly degenerating state of mind (a “tool of the Ltd News stable”, a “corporate shill”!), I’ll take my leave now, and hope that you feel better in the morning 🙂
Son of foro
March 9, 2011 at 4:50 pmDoes this mean I can no longer refer to Stuart as the Big Mac?
rhwombat
March 9, 2011 at 6:21 pmNoodle Bar: well put…though it would be nice to ban junk food from the school canteen, as well as the dog. 😉
Stiofan: weasel.
jordant
March 9, 2011 at 7:37 pmStuart. Totally agree with you. It is highly inappropriate for national sporting teams and events to be used by junk food companies to target children.
I’d suggest that the brand values of of the Australian cricket team are totally inconsistent with those of KFC.
The marketing exec’s at Cricket Australia need their heads read.
Obviously the money offered was too significant to overlook. But so is illegal sports betting.
Cricket’s integrity is under threat from many different directions.
In my opinion, KFC’s sponsorship of the Australian Cricket – ‘isn’t cricket’.
ash
March 10, 2011 at 10:51 amEasy for Macgilla to take the high ground! No one’s waving wads of cash in front of him, and when they did tell him to be in an ad (probably for not much money) he said no b/c he was having a hissy fit!
Johnfromplanetearth
March 10, 2011 at 1:08 pmZUT ALORS: So you want families to stay at home all day and all night? Not go out at all? Not eat out? Stay at home and make sandwiches all freaking week! This is the Left all over, you want us to turnout the lights, freeze in winter, fry in summer and live on bread and water sitting in the dark holding hands singing kum by ya my lord! I’m not a big junk food man, i like a hamburger now and again, but i do know that many people find it difficult to live and budget for food every week. MacDill has always had his head up his own arse!
jordant
March 10, 2011 at 1:38 pm@ Johnfromplanetearth typical stupid comment from a pauline-hanson esq. dumb Aussie. Too many people like you have vote. I take it Johnfromplanetearth you have no qualms about billions of your tax dollars paying for childhood obesity health related problems and diabetes? Dollars that could have been spent on educating people – like you. Junk Food advertising has been banned during children’s programs. KFC has found a way round that ban by advertising during cricket matches which children and families watch. Cricket Australia is currently aided-and-abetting in the promotion of junk food to children, adversely affects the health of the nation. Perhaps we should create a ‘Junk Food Tax’ and FKC et el can pay for the health bill related to childhood obesity. It might be said that KFC’s sponsorship of Cricket Australia and cricket – which is indirectly harming the nation – is “Un-Australian”.
zut alors
March 10, 2011 at 1:41 pm@ Johnfromplanetearth: ‘…put yourself in their shoes if they have any…’
Did you know that sandwiches are transportable? That is to say, they can be made at home and taken to another location to be consumed. If people are so poor that, as you allege above, they cannot afford shoes, then home made lunches would be a way in which they can enjoy an outing without the imposition of a $50 food bill.
Clearly, this topic has reached its limit.
Elan
March 10, 2011 at 2:02 pm“…………had his head up his own arse!
Is that where he met you?
Gawd! you DO get worked up ‘DEARTH!
NOODLE BAR nailed it. Fudging the issue does not neutralise it.
I remember raising this at a nutritional seminar at the local Uni 15 years or so ago. It is worse now. Far worse. But it is happening because our delectable legislators allow it to happen.
Sponsorship by the smoking lobby was stopped, why not this?
And as for the appalling Mr MG and the dreaded Al K Hall:
“…….. his endorsement of Wolfblass wines that it encourages people to drink to unhealthy levels.”
It did? He did? The shame of the man! What a boozy twot! That reminds me of that Priest in Father Ted: Drink! DRINK!!
If these companies had even a modicum of integrity they would inject funds into sport, having that acknowledged at sport functions or whatever., NOT having their logo and message plastered everywhere.
As for the rationale that MacGill refused to do a KFC ad : “….he hit the roof when asked to do a KFC ad at a time when he was apparently facing the threat of being dropped from the team”
I reckon that would have been a damn good incentive to DO the bloody ad!
Simple logic dictates that it isn’t good for a career nowadays to ‘buck the system’. I would have thought that would take some small measure of integrity…? But still some will find a way to criticise! As usual.