The "Carling" Cup: Advertising Gone Too Far

Posted Thu, 03/12/2009 - 12:03

This is advertising gone far, far too far.

The English Football League Cup has, since 2003 been sponsored by and named after the beer Carling. It's currently known as the Carling Cup. Prior to this, is was sponsored by Worthington's beer, Coca-Cola, Rumbelows, Littlewoods and the Milk Marketing Board.

This means that the current official website for the League Cup is at carlingcup.com. However, when you go to this site for the first time, it presents you with this message:


Carling Cup Age Challenge

Since it's advertising alcohol at you on this site, it seems that you have to be over 18 to view the contents, and it asks you to honestly report your age in order to verify this. If you are indeed 18 or over, then you get taken to the site, where you can view all the information about the competition. But, if you're under 18, then it instead takes you to a site on responsible drinking, aimed at children.

I've no idea what the implications are of entering the wrong age: probably nothing, but this means that any under 18 year old with a keen interest in football is presented with the choice of either a) lying about their age in order to read about football (hardly something to encourage), or b) getting the information from somewhere else. Luckily there's obviously lots of information about on the web about the cup, but for other events or competitions this might not be the case.

That a beer company has influence over a national football tournament, to the extent that it can prevent kids from reading about football, is totally messed up in my opinion.

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