Netflix’s well-liked Formula One present is offering tobacco giants with a quick and efficient advertising car to swerve previous bans on promoting their product, trade screens mentioned Wednesday.
The behind-the-scenes Formula One streaming sequence Drive to Survive has been massively well-liked on Netflix, which lately launched the fifth season.
But campaigners warn that past boosting the motor sport’s recognition, the present can also be delivering into houses worldwide the branding of cigarette corporations that sponsor F1 groups, together with in international locations the place tobacco promoting is banned.
In a recent report, F1 trade monitor Formula Money and tobacco trade watchdog STOP charged that in simply the fourth season of Drive to Survive, “a total of 1.1 billion minutes of footage streamed around the world contained tobacco-related content.”
And half of all episodes throughout that season contained tobacco-related branding within the opening minute, in accordance to the report, entitled: “Driving Addiction: F1, Netflix and Cigarette Company Advertising”.
The product branding of Ferrari sponsor Philip Morris International (PMI) and McLaren sponsor British American Tobacco (BAT) has “heavily featured in the series, with extended plotlines following the teams’ drivers,” the report mentioned.
“Research suggests that PMI and BAT are reaching new audiences through the show, including people who don’t otherwise watch F1 races,” it added.
Younger audiencesÂ
Wednesday’s report confirmed that the viewers of Drive to Survive had been youthful than typical F1 audiences, and likewise recommended it had contributed in direction of considerably rising viewership of F1 races past the Netflix sequence.
“This increase in viewers means more people see the branding F1 sponsors place on the cars and livery,” it mentioned.
“Netflix has a responsibility to not deliver content that is promoting, even if it’s indirectly, cigarette company brands,” Jorge Alday of STOP advised AFP.
Netflix didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
A world treaty has known as for the elimination of all promoting for tobacco, the usage of which the World Health Organization estimates kills greater than eight million folks every year.
And the International Automobile Federation (FIA), Formula One’s governing physique, has for twenty years really helpful towards tobacco firm sponsorship within the sport.
The tobacco corporations have since stopped promoting for his or her conventional cigarette manufacturers with F1, however have in some circumstances continued to push newer various merchandise like e-cigarettes.
“They live in this grey area around what is and what isn’t tobacco marketing,” Alday mentioned.
When contacted by AFP, the FIA mentioned it “remains firmly opposed to tobacco advertising and continues to stand by its 2003 recommendations”.
However, it mentioned, “we are not in a position to interfere with the private commercial arrangements between the teams and their sponsors, or broadcast agreements.”
Formula One in the meantime insisted that “all advertising is in line with applicable laws.”
Advertising by way of historic footageÂ
Wednesday’s report discovered that PMI and BAT spent an estimated $40 million on F1 promoting in 2022.
BAT’s Vuse e-cigarette and Velo nicotine pouch merchandise “were the most prominent brands on the McLaren livery throughout the season,” the report mentioned.
It identified that branding for these merchandise appeared at 13 out of twenty-two races, together with on the Mexico City Grand Prix, regardless of Mexico’s sturdy promoting restrictions.
PMI, one of many oldest and longest standing F1 sponsors, in the meantime scaled again its spending considerably final 12 months.
While it remained a Ferrari associate, its logos and designs now not appeared on the group’s vehicles, the report discovered.
When contacted by AFP, the corporate’s vice chairman of worldwide communications Tommaso Di Giovanni insisted that the partnership between Netflix and F1 “has nothing to do with us,” insisting that it had discontinued product branding on vehicles and drivers’ attire since 2007.
Wednesday’s report in the meantime claimed that the tobacco big, which has spent almost $2.4 billion on promoting because it first entered the game in 1971, continued to draw branding benefit from the Netflix sequence by way of historic footage.
Report co-author Caroline Reid of Formula Money identified in an announcement {that a} single “minute of historic footage featured five different cigarette brands, including PMI’s Marlboro.”
