Everyone has a take, this is mine
It’s been all over the news lately. You can’t miss it. We’re talking about Georges Laraque and the whole Octane 7.0 drama.
Whilst I fail completely as a feminist and don’t have an issue with the scantily clad women in the advert, ones whom compared to recent Dallas Stars Ice Girls videos, are almost conservatively dressed, the main drama has arisen out of a breach of Article 25.1 of the CBA.
As everyone’s now had pointed out to them (and I had pink sharpied in my copy of the CBA) not only do you need to let your team know what you’re up to in regards to endorsements and sponsorship, but you, in accordance with 25.1 you also can’t as part of endorsement or sponsorship be assocaited with an alcoholic beverage, the exception to this being malt based beverages such as beer.
On HNIC tonight, Kelly Hrudey suggested that by not allowing players to endorse an alcoholic beverage the NHL is essentially promoting a double standard. This double standard, in his opinion, is evidence by the fact we see arena’s plastered with beer advertising and that a beer company, Molson, even owns an NHL franchise. With all due respect Mr Hrudey as someone with far more knowledge and a far better job than myself, beer advertising is treated differently to alcohol advertising in respect of allowences by the CBA and if the product had been a malt-based beverage as allowed by the CBA, this situation would not have arisen.
Though Laraque may not have read his contract beyond the figures of how much he was making, you would expect that every NHL agent should and would have an indepth knowledge of the CBA and how its articles and clauses affect their clients. In this instance, the issue is raised : Why did Laraque’s agent not pick up on the problem arising from such an endorsement? I, as a 20 year old Australian fan (albiet one with 3/4’s of a law degree and a rather working knowledge of the CBA), am aware of such a clause.
The main issue however, that this whole debacle brings back to the spotlight is that of the place of alcohol sponsorship in sport. Whilst the NHL already effectively limits sponsorships to that of beer companies, with beer itself being portrayed as essentially an integral and timeless part of the hockey experience (it even got its on page in A Canadian Saturday Night by Andrew Podnieks), should alcohol sponsorship in anyway be allowed, especially due to the prevalance of alcohol related violence?
I know here in Australia the issue was raised recently, and when numbers were released, it was clearly evident that without alcohol sponsorship, nearly ever single Australian sport would suffer substantially to the point where the growth and development of sports in the country would inevitably start to regress. Whilst Australian sport is much more dependent in the absence of tv rights and with smaller markets and population, it is hard to believe the effect would not be substantial. A prime example of this is the recent Molson Giver 5 Commercials. It would not be hard to speculate that the cumulative donation total from such a campaign would be enough to fund the Olympic campaigns for several smaller winter sports.
In my opinion, junior hockey is where the real issue lies. In a league where, atleast in America, none of the athletes, and in Canada, a large portion of the athletes, are below legal drinking ages alcohol sponsorship is rampant. Whilst there is the possibility that no financial alternative is available, particularly in the current economic climate, questions have to be raised about the wiseness of such advertising choices, particlury with the high number of minds open to this negative influence both on the ice and in the stands.
Possibly the most disturbing, and if a fault of the economic climate (due to a lack of alternative options) , saddening examples of this lies in a WHL arena, where no less than 16 ads for alcoholic beverages are present. These ads look down upon on a team of young impressionable boys who last season lost one of their own, a teammate, to alcohol poisoning just two days after his 19th birthday.
Where do we draw the line here between the business reality that without sponsorship and the money it brings that enables JR and other leagues to run and the morality argument that the promotion of alcohol through sports advertising contributes to curren social problems caused by underage and exessive drinking as well as alcohol fueled violence?
With recent moves in the NCAA to drastically cut back or remove alcohol advertising from venues and sports broadcasts what’s stopping hockey?
Thursday, instead of paying attention to the Private International Law lecture I was in, I got involved in a twitter based debate about the shootout with my favourite HNIC Host Jeff Marek (who has managed to push aside my adoration of PJ Stock by being so damn nice to me on twitter) and good friend Brynna.