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Sponsoring sports events is meant to serve a number of marketing objectives for a corporation and its products, including increasing brand awareness, reinforcing or enhancing brand image, and improving sales or market share. 1- 4 Moreover, tobacco manufacturers have used sponsorship as a means of circumventing advertising regulations or restrictions. Once cigarette advertising was banned from the broadcast media in the UK in 1965, in the USA in 1971, and in Canada in 1972, individual tobacco companies increasingly turned toward sponsoring broadcast sports events to compensate for lost advertising exposure. 5- 7 Despite cigarette advertising not being permitted on television in such countries, auto racing sponsorship serves as a particularly good example of how tobacco companies continuously gain widespread exposure for their respective brands. Citing Sponsors Report , it has been reported that Marlboro received nearly 3.5 hours of in-focus exposure during the 15 races of the 1989 Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) season and a videotape recording of the Marlboro Grand Prix on 16 July 1989 revealed that Marlboro was seen or mentioned 5933 times. 8 More recently, Sponsors Report data indicate that from 1997 through 1999 tobacco companies achieved 169 hours of television advertising exposure through sponsoring motor sports events held in the USA, which was estimated to be equivalent to US$411 million in advertising value. 9
Additional objectives for sport sponsorship are cross-promotional/co-sponsorship opportunities, as well as enhancement of trade relations and goodwill. 2, 4, 10 Tobacco companies are seldom the exclusive sponsors of an event or team, and in the case of auto racing, multiple sponsors are inevitable considering the exorbitant operating budgets that characterise the sport. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, McLaren Mercedes, and British American Racing (BAR) Honda represent the Formula One (F1) racing teams with the largest budgets for the 2001 season, spending $284.4 million, $274.6 million, and $194.5 million, respectively. 11 Although there is a long list of sponsors for each of these teams, tobacco companies represent a particularly significant source of funding. Philip Morris, in its partnership with Ferrari, spends roughly $23 million each year toward race car driver Michael Schumacher's salary, and about $65 million toward having Marlboro placed in multiple locations of the race car, helmet, and overalls of Schumacher and his team mate Rubens Barrichello.