6 reasons why motorcycle racing should be very afraid

1. Energy drinks are bad for your health
In an alarming resemblance to the early 1960s when science started discovering the adverse effects cigarette smoking was having on people’s health, energy drinks are coming under more and more pressures surrounding ingredients, marketing and the transparency of such. During the last 12 years, the American-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest has linked the consumption of energy drinks to 34 individual deaths. Caffeine is highly addictive and awareness of the adverse effects of sugar is rapidly increasing. Surely nothing good can come of mixing them together in a brightly coloured can marketed at young people.

2. $54,350,000
In 2015, the food and drink sector attributed the third highest value of sponsorship dollars to MotoGP. And aside from the potato chip brand San Carlo’s sponsorship of the Team Italia Moto3 team, nearly every one of those millions and millions of dollars came from energy drink sponsorship. Whether it be personal sponsorship deals with individual riders, various levels of team sponsorship ranging from a belly-pan sticker to naming rights, or title sponsorship of entire race weekends, MotoGP fans cannot escape the names or logos of energy drinks from being beamed into their faces via TV, podcasts, smartphones, websites and magazines.

3. 2006 wasn’t that long ago
The memory of the financial suffering would be very vivid for many. It’s only been 10 years since the exemption which allowed tobacco sponsorship to remain visible in motorsport finally ended. Ten years since MotoGP, its events, its teams and its riders were left floundering in a very new territory of having to attract the sponsorship dollars on their Pat Malone. If they wanted to continue, they not only needed to find the funds to run the expensive day-to-day operations of a race team, but they had to look after the marketing, PR and logistics of such which before then was handled by the tobacco companies.

4. This time kids involved
When the rivers of tobacco and alcohol sponsorship began to slow, it was led by a social conscious and responsibility towards improving the health of adults over the age of 18 who might have smoked or drank too much as a result of highly visible logos appearing in motorsport. So while it was well over 40 years between the health concerns of cigarette smoking becoming known and the eventual banning of tobacco logos in sport, the fact that the marketing of energy drinks is focussed towards kids and young people and their brightly coloured logos evidence of such surely spells the end may be nearer than we think.

5. It’s already starting
The legislation, that is. Latvia, Lithuania and Colombia are three countries which either already have or have taken steps towards banning the sale of energy drinks to minors. Right now, the lucrative and growing energy drink industry is largely unregulated. But there are many medical- and science-based groups and movements working very hard to force legislative regulation on the makers of the energy drinks, regulation that will no doubt one day trickle down to sport sponsorship.  

6. Selective hearing
It’s completely understandable why Dorna, and no doubt many other organisations which need a lot of money to operate, have their fingers in their ears when it comes to the growing health concerns surrounding energy drinks. Because the simple fact of the whole highly caffeinated sticky sugary matter is the energy drink industry – much like the cigarette industry – is rolling in big endless piles of cash. And that makes the world go ’round.