The Coca-Cola Company is the longest-standing sponsor of the Olympic Games—a relationship dating so far back that Coke still had cocaine in it when it started. Today, Coca-Cola spends an estimated $20 million every year to associate its brand with that of the Olympics. Whatever its positive effects, the deal hasn’t convinced everyone of the company’s virtues, and calls from public health experts for the International Olympic Committee to end the partnership have grown louder over recent years. Increasingly, they’re reminiscent of successful campaigns to ban Olympic tobacco sponsorships in the 1980s.
The tobacco ban and the ever-growing distance between the Games and alcoholic beverages show a seeming consensus that