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”
Stiofan
March 10, 2011 at 2:18 pm@Elan
Man who flogs alcohol and man who flogs vitamin supplements condemn fast food advertising on public health grounds.
Which part of the complete bleedin’ absurdity of that scenario escapes you?
Elan
March 10, 2011 at 4:20 pmIOF: another who gets into a tizzy! Have you thought of having counselling for your anger issues?
Which part of the complete bleedin’ absurdity of your own argument escapes you?
All of it. You and your attack dogs have made no headway on the issue being discussed here. You don’t like that. You get angry.
Calm yourself OAF. Your arteries will harden, both with your obvious diet, and with that anger.
It is difficult to get low enough to reach your level, but I’ll have a go:
A diet of fast food WILL damage health.
A diet of alcohol will do the same.
but
Most of us…….MOST of us do not have a diet of alcohol. The diet of fast food is tempting though isn’t it? It’s cheap and tasty.
I don’t know about you but when I’m hungry I prefer to eat, not drink.
We recognise the abuse of alcohol (you certainly see it as a problem!), but we don’t recognise the consumption of fast food;-as abuse.
Alcohol IS abused, but-BUT when enjoyed with your meal, with friends ‘alcohol’, a decent glass of wine is very enjoyable.
To put it in the same category KFC in order to ‘score a point’,….. and you talk about absurd!!!!
But you little sweeties had to come up with something didn’t you? What?? Are you franchisees?
The vitamins and big business. Yep! A huge problem, people are giving up booze, and fast food, and just eating vitamins.
And for the record IOF; I DO understand the point re hypocrisy, just as I understand the disingenuous mega hypocrisy of grouping alcohol and vitamins with the perniciously slimy grouping of fast food with a healthy lifestyle!
Bleedin’ absurdity is the move to sanitise fast food=healthy lifestyle, by trying to throw your rubbery spanners into the argument.
This topic has by no means reached its limit for me when stupidity thinks it wins the day.
Over to you. I’m going to enjoy this!
Stiofan
March 10, 2011 at 4:37 pm@ELAN
Fast food and alcohol have more in common with each other than you’re prepared to admit. Both can be enjoyed in moderation (de gustibus!). Both are undoubtedly over-consumed by some sections of the community, with obvious deleterious effects on their health. (Although I’ve never heard of anyone getting their head kicked in by someone who’d lost control of their faculties through over-consumption of KFC.)
The flogging of vitamin supplements leverages off the same ignorance about health and the human body that leads people to believe that KFC is the basis of a balanced diet. The difference, of course, is that a lot more people “believe in” vitamin pills than over-indulge in KFC.
Having said that, the mental image of someone’s over-indulging in KFC is making me feel nauseous, so I’ll sign out now and leave you to vent your vapid rage in a vacuum 🙂
Murray Hall
March 10, 2011 at 5:25 pmJust got my KFC ALF Premiership fixture, looks like I now have no choice but to fatten my son up!
rhwombat
March 10, 2011 at 6:18 pmWell played elan. …and brave Sir Stiofan rode away…again. Slainte.
Elan
March 10, 2011 at 6:21 pmAwwwww come on IOF!, we were just getting started..!
(Mind you, folk who copy the reasoning of others can be a tad tedious).
I’m ‘prepared’ to admit? Ach! you silly twisted boy!
You put up much the same argument, so I’ll give much the same answer. (BTW: people who consume an abundance of KFC do not indeed kick heads in-they usually cannot raise their leg above their knee level).
As for vitamins, come now, a balanced diet doth not need vitamins. A poor diet can benefit from vitamins. Oh yes it can! As a pragmatist I am happy that IF nothing else-a supp is taken. It’s better than nowt.
We could go into another stream of argument of peeing out an excess of water solubles or liver damage with the fat solubles, but that is not the discussion here.
Same as excess of booze.
The issue is the influence of KFC/Macc/Hungry Jacks have over sport. That’s it.
I know their dollars are valued by sporting clubs-and don’t they know it, and take full advantage of it!
I’ll repeat;-if they had the slightest interest in investing in sport, they would donate, and expect nothing in return. Sounds outlandish doesn’t it?
All clubs will ‘prostitute’ themselves for cash. Governments have to stop this as they did smoking.
If they paid more attention to what causes obesity and spent less money on bloody silly adverts telling us to eat five serves of this and three serves of that, we might get some small solution to the obesity epidemic.
I’m sick to damn death programs that pull the plug out, but make no attempt to switch the tap off.
Elan
March 10, 2011 at 6:26 pmRHW: I just put my post up. I started it one hour and a half ago!
I took a break when someone in this street lost their bottle and went very publicly…er, well….loopy! (Too much KFC waditelyer!)
A fascinating break to watch someone held under the MHAct!
………….and there was my wee pearl of wisdom waiting to be posted.
Tra la!