Junk food “avoids advertising regulation” with top level UK sports sponsorship

The BMJ aimed to investigate the reach of junk food brands across the UK’s most popular sports, high profile teams, and sporting stars. We conducted an internet search for current sponsorship deals between sporting entities and companies and brands that sell HFSS food or drink. As there is no other central repository or record of these deals, our findings might not be exhaustive. We searched for the “partners,” “partnership,” “sponsors,” or “sponsorship” sections of the official websites of teams and governing bodies (box 1). We also searched for recent news stories in the marketing trade press announcing deals with sporting stars and then cross referenced this with their personal Instagram or TikTok accounts to check for adverts.

Our search identified 95 deals with individuals, teams, and official bodies. They include a partnership between the England and Wales Cricket Board and KP Snacks that sees Hula Hoops and Tyrrells crisps advertised on the T20 and test cricket kits, respectively, for both the men’s and women’s teams. Pringles has a deal with Cole Palmer, who plays football for England’s men’s team and Chelsea; Snickers has partnered with his national teammate Bukayo Saka, who also plays for Arsenal. The energy drink brand Red Bull has deals with England cricket captain Ben Stokes, cyclist Tom Pidcock, and pole vaulter Molly Caudery, as well as six Premier League football clubs (box 2).

Official sponsors of the Euro 2025 women’s football championships in Switzerland include Just Eat Takeaway, Hellmann’s, and PepsiCo. The organisers UEFA forecast that the championships will be watched by 500 million people around the world—and those HFSS brands will be featured prominently on LED boards beside pitches and on interview backdrops during press conferences. Other junk food brands have been capitalising on the tournament’s build-up. Cadbury and PepsiCo have launched major marketing campaigns around women’s football stars—including England’s Leah Williamson and Lauren James, who each have deals with both brands.

PepsiCo started ramping up its advertising campaign in April, with the launch of a squad of global women’s football stars wearing Pepsi kits, featuring in TV adverts, special edition cans, and on giant billboards in north and west London. Cadbury has launched an advertising campaign featuring four England and Ireland women’s football stars; buying chocolate bars offers fans a chance to win a meeting with these players.

Health halo effect

Emma Boyland, professor of food marketing and child health at the University of Liverpool, tells The BMJ: “The rise of digital media has meant an extra level of integration for food marketing campaigns through sport. Previously the marketing would have been limited to in and around the events themselves. Now campaigns start ramping up in advance of events in concerted ways across [the internet], television, outdoor [advertising], competitions . . . The tie-ins are more prolific now, and it’s such a prominent form of exposure.”

Experts say that sports sponsorship gives junk food firms a “health halo effect” by making their products seem more acceptable and less harmful to consumers. This is supported by research that shows it improves children’s opinions of unhealthy brands.345 “Brands are associated with positive health attributes that they typically do not deserve, which is misleading for consumers, especially children,” Boyland says.

MP and GP Opher says that The BMJ’s findings demonstrate “genuine sportswashing. It mirrors the tobacco industry activity in the 1970s, when it deliberately targeted sport.”

Last October a report by the House of Lords urged the government to ban the sponsorship of sports events by unhealthy food brands as part of a series of recommendations to tackle obesity and diet related diseases.6 The government acknowledged the request but didn’t commit to it, saying: “We will continue to review evidence of the impacts on children of advertising for less healthy food and drink products and will consider whether further action is needed.”8

One of the most glaring examples we found was KP Snacks’ partnership with The Hundred, a cricket tournament aimed at families that sees eight regional teams from England and Wales compete in fast paced matches, which begins next month (August 2025). Each team has a different KP brand on its shirt, including Pom Bears, Butterkist, Skips, and McCoys. The tournament is screened by the BBC and Sky Sports during the daytime in August, when children are on school holidays.

Cadbury corners football

Cadbury’s deals with four top England and Ireland women’s footballers are part of a major marketing campaign capitalising on the Euro 2025 championships. The players—England’s Jill Scott and Ireland’s Kate McCabe in addition to Leah Williamson and Lauren James—star in TV adverts featuring Cadbury Fingers, Dairy Milk, and Hot Chocolate, where they are seen thanking family members for their support. They have all been promoting Cadbury on their Instagram accounts; Williamson recently posted a video of her making an ice cream sundae, topped with what seem to be Cadbury Giant Buttons and a Twirl.

Food Active’sBradshaw says: “You can’t underestimate how much some kids idolise those players. These players are in absolute peak physical condition, and they are unfortunately promoting products that just do not generally feature in athletes’ diets.”

Cadbury also has partnerships with eight football clubs (which have men’s and women’s teams) in the England and Scotland Premier Leagues. It’s deals with six Premier League football clubs began in 2020 and involve them promoting charitable causes, such as deaf awareness and sign language with Arsenal and helping older football fans with Manchester United.

Matthew Philpott, executive director of public health charity Health Equalities Group, is sceptical of Cadbury’s motives. He describes it as a “particularly calculated and pernicious example” of brands marketing HFSS products while at the same time targeting specific groups. The deals also enable Cadbury to promote its brand on the clubs’ Facebook accounts, to have advertising boards at the grounds, and sell special edition chocolate bars with wrappers displaying the various football clubs.

The brand previously sponsored the Premier League for three years from 2017, which was its first football partnership. A European Sponsorship Association awards case study says that Cadbury’s sponsorship of female football stars was prompted by the “challenge of having less in-store visibility due to new HFSS regulations.” Legislation introduced in October 2022 restricted the location and promotion of HFSS products in stores.9

“It simply should be banned”

Experts tell us that junk foods’ sponsorship of sports should be banned owing to the level of exposure it gives to brands and the potential effect on children’s health. The new HFSS advertising rules have been heavily contested and delayed by the food industry. The government said the delay would enable them to consult on how some adverts that highlight the overall brand rather than individual HFSS products could be exempt from the new rules.

But we have identified sponsorship deals in sports that would enable junk food firms to advertise HFSS products on TV throughout the day. Nestlé confirms that, from October, when the Mexico Grand Prix takes place, Kit Kat adverts will appear beside Formula 1 race tracks as part of a multiyear deal.

“We need to have some morals and ethics about the types of products we associate with sport,” says Robin Ireland, honorary research fellow at Glasgow University’s School of Health and Wellbeing. “It’s an essential part of many people’s lives. The kind of exposure sport gives you, it’s like Hollywood. It’s big, it’s glamorous, and companies want to be associated with it. But we should not be allowing food brands to be using sport to promote consumption of their unhealthy products to young people.

Referring to the advertising of HFSS foods in sports, Ireland adds: “It simply should be banned. We should not be allowing it to be associated in the way it currently is.”

The Health Equalities Group’s Philpott says: “Why do we feel this is a problem? It’s because it is something which has gone under the radar for quite a long time, and boyalin the UK. Considering the disproportionate levels of overweight and obesity we have in the UK compared with other countries in Europe and the need to very significantly turn the tide on this, I would suggest that some sort of ban on marketing of HFSS products through sports channels and assets is something to be looked at with some urgency.”

But Joan Walmsley, who chaired the House of Lords’ Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, tells us that the 9 pm watershed and total online ban on HFSS products should be “monitored” before looking at extending the legislation to sport. “In the meantime, I’d like to encourage sports people and event organisers to choose different sponsors other than those selling less healthy food. Sport and health should go together,” she adds.

In response to The BMJ’s findings, Opher tabled a parliamentary question to ask the health secretary “whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to ban sponsorship of sports events by unhealthy food brands.” The government responded that it had “no current plans to ban the sponsorship of sports events by food brands associated with less healthy food or drink products or ban the advertising of less healthy food or drink products at sports events.” It added, “We continue to review the evidence of the impacts on children of less healthy food or drink product advertising and will consider where further action is needed.”

Rayner says that it isn’t clear how big a problem junk food advertising in sport is, relative to wider junk food advertising. “I think we should just restrict the advertising of all HFSS products to adults wherever you find it, and that would solve a lot of the problems for me, before you tackle sports sponsorship. Most advertising is aimed at adults, quite frankly—not at kids, because kids don’t have the money to buy those products. Why not ban the advertising of HFSS to adults and be done with it?”