THERE May, WowEVER SE B SUPREME SE ing

BEER SPORTS SPONSORSHIPS MAY BE ON WAY OUT

TORONTO (CUP) — Brew- ery sponsorship of university athletics may become a thing of the past if the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) has its way.

The COU, which consists of the presidents of the province’s 15 universities, is concerned about student drinking and the relationship between alcohol and athletics.

Earlier this year it asked its members to review their poli- cies on brewery sponsorship of athletic events.

As a result, many athletic departments could find them- selves losing lucrative adver- tising revenue and scrambling for new forms of sponsorship.

William Sayers, COU’s Di- rector of Communications, said the recommendation resulted

from the findings of a special committee on athletics.

“It came to their attention,” he said, “that the volume of sponsorship and the dollars involved were considerable.”

Convincing some universi- ties to give up on this type of fevenue might prove to be easier said then done.

Gib Chapman, Director of Athletics and Recreation at U of T, said a move to ban brew- ery sponsorship would have a large financial impact on U of T’s athletic programm. He said Labatt’s has been heavily in- volved in at U of T, and a move to stop its sponsorship would result in a huge loss of adver- tising revenue.

Some universities, however, abandoned brewery sponsor- ship long before the COU’s recommendation.

by Mark Evans University of Toronto Varsity In 1982, McMaster Univer-

sity’s athletic department es- tablished a policy of refusing

sponsorship from ‘companies +

promoting beer, wine,. or tobacco.

Mary Keyes, McMaster’s di- rector of athletics, said allow- ing such activity was not con- sistent with what the school was trying to teach its students.

“We feel that in our academic programs we’re promoting knowledge of the effects of tobacco on healthy lifestyles,” she said, “and to be promoting that through advertising is not very consistent.”

She said the total sponsor- ship package from the brewer- ies was only worth $15,000, so there was nota large financial loss involved.

Chapman said McMaster’s administration made the deci-

sion easier by re-embursing the athletics department for the money it lost by initiating the policy.

Keyes said her department replaced the lost revenue by actively pursuing other types of corporate sponsorship. One sign of their success, she said, is the new $30,000 football

scoreboard built through the

sponsorship of Domino’s Pizza and Coca-Cola.

Two years ago Ryerson Poly- technical Institute adopted a similar policy restricting advertisements from beer com- panies. Chuck Matthews, As- sistant Athletics Director at Ryerson, said at one time Labatt’s and Molson’s were involved in the school’s intra- mural programmes.

“We have gone away from that because we didn’t want to

1 HOUR LATER

THIS /S DEBBIE'S PLACE, ALL RIGHT!

NOBODY

DR. SNEER KIDNAPPED DEBBIE HERE! HE THINKS SHE KNOWS THE |\LOCATION OF |THE TREASURE OF THE PIRATE, CAPTAIN SNEER, HIS ANCESTOR! I'VE GOT TO FIND SOME CLUES TO

WHERE HE'S GONE !

|THEN I'LL MAIL THE SCUM--

have areliance on sponsorship from the beer companies. to offset our costs. If they pulled out we’d be stuck, so we basi- cally have gone on our own and tried to stay with the policy.”

Bruce Pierce, a sales repre- sentative for Carling O’Keefe, said if the universities decided not to allow brewery sponsor- ship, Carling O’Keefe would re-evaluate its promotional activities, including scholar- ships and bursaries it awards.

Because these awards are presented by the company it- self, the total amount of money involved is not known, but Pierce said Carling O’Keefe had student awards at every Onta- rio university and college. The largest is a $5000 scholarship awarded to a student in the University of Guelph’s Hotel and Food Administration course.

Rick Shaver, a sales repre- sentative at Labatt’s said his company’s actions in the event of a decision to ban brewery sponsorship would not be as drastic.

Beer companies sponsor events and programmes in order to increase their shares of the market, not to recruit new beer drinkers, Pierce said.

“Were not trying to get any- body that’s not currently a beer drinker to support our brands of beer,” Pierce said.

———__

= Thursday, January 29th 1987

Page 7