"We are in the cigarette business. We are not in the sports business. We use sports as an avenue for advertising our products." Tobacco Industry Executive (at RJR)

Using tennis to sell death

Are the Swiss Indoors doomed?

A French proverb says: "Hunger drives the wolf out of the wood". It is obviously not hunger that has driven Roger Brennwald, the organizer of the Davidoff Swiss Indoors, out of the wood. However, by recently giving an interview to the Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Genève, he has broken the policy of silence that he had displayed until then with respect to our campaign. This is a significant first victory for the Davideath Swiss Indoors movement.

Although the interview is overall a self-congratulatory smokescreen, it is unmistakably the means Mr. Brennwald has chosen to respond publicly to our arguments. We appreciate his gesture. Reading carefully what he said, our campaign seems to have hit a sensitive point, and behind his too obviously calculated display of assurance, we see signs that doubt is instilling into his mind.

Would it be that the Davidoff Swiss Indoors giant, in spite of its superb arrogance, is a vulnerable Achilles, and that a few determined public health advocates can easily provoke his downfall? Let us say right away that, if there are no Davidoff Swiss Indoors in 2010, it will not be the fault of a "bunch of anti-smoking activists" - an easy scapegoat for those who do not want to face their responsibilities. It will be because Mr. Breenwald has opted for the ostrich policy, ignoring that the world around Basel has changed since 1994.

If the Davidoff Swiss Indoors must come to an abrupt end, it will be simply because they fail to comply with the law, something that could have been foreseen a long time ago. Perhaps the flow of easy tobacco money is so addictive that its recipients lose touch with reality - like with any other drug.

Let us be more specific. The key issue of our campaign against the Davidoff Swiss Indoors is not the tournament itself - we love tennis and admire Roger Federer as a tennis player. The key issue is that this tournament is used as a vehicle for the promotion of a tobacco brand, Davidoff, and that its title sponsor is the tobacco group Oettinger Davidoff/Imperial Tobacco. Tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship are banned in most countries, and in particular in all EU countries. Article 13 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO/FCTC), the international public health treaty ratified as of today by 168 states (but not Switzerland), and its Guidelines, commit treaty parties to "undertake a comprehensive ban of all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship".

Furthermore, this article deals with cross-border advertising as follows:

The Davidoff Swiss Indoors violates the terms of the WHO Framework Convention on all grounds: it advertises and promotes a tobacco brand; it is sponsored by a tobacco company; and does all of this on an intense cross-border way.

Furthermore, the tournament violates European law - and escapes enforcement penalties only because Switzerland, although at the heart of Europe, has still to make its law Euro-compatible in this area. Indeed, the European Union has adopted in 2003 a Tobacco Advertising Directive (2003/33/EC) which bans tobacco sponsorship of events or activities having cross-border effects. The Basel ATP tournament falls in this category:  it is an international event, watched - according to the organizers - by television in 185 countries, and broadcast via satellite to all European countries. As the result of this directive, tobacco sponsorship of Formula One races has disappeared. A report of the European Commission evaluated the implementation of the directive in 2008 and observed that the directive had been fully transposed by member States, adding:

Switzerland is such a problematic third party, and the Davidoff Swiss Indoors is one of the challenges the EU enforcement authorities face. So, when Mr. Brennwald says: "I hope reason will triumph. But if one day a majority ... of members of the European Union think my policy is harmful, I will say goodbye" (our translation). Well, Mr. Brennwald, they do think your policy is harmful! Take a few minutes to read the EU Tobacco Advertising Directive. It says:

So, on moral grounds, Mr. Brennwald is in an untenable position. His only recourse is to invoke weak Swiss legislation, saying that European law does not apply to the Basel tournament. This is an illusory line of defence, which will collapse on 19 December 2009, when the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2007/65/EC) is fully transposed into national legislation by EU member States. This directive prohibits product placement for tobacco products and will apply to all television programmes received in the European Union:

As from 19 December 2009, EU countries can take legal action to block television programmes entering their territory that contain product placement for tobacco products. The Davidoff banners in the Basel Centre Court, the Davidoff logos on the ball girls and ball boys and on the line umpires, all prominently visible on the screen during the matches, qualify with no hesitation as product placement. Getting rid of such visual manifestations of the Davidoff logo means giving up tobacco sponsorship.

This places Mr. Brennwald before a dilemma: either he ignores the directive and continues his contracts with D:SF and other European televisions, and he falls in illegality; or he complies with the EU directive, and his tournament will be amputated of the broadcast to the European continent. If he is tempted to ignore the European legal context, as his interview to the Tribune de Genève suggests, we are not certain that ATP, the owner of the transmission rights, will accept to compromise its reputation in an illegal scheme, or will even accept to see one of its important tournaments being denied television coverage to a major region of the world, tennis-wise.

Clearly, Mr. Breenwald has put the Basel tournament in a very dangerous position, which was predictable years ago, had he not been blindfolded by tobacco money. If, now, Mr. Breenwald does not realize quickly that the only way out of this mess is to find another title sponsor, and take action, he, and he alone, will be to be blamed for the downfall of his tournament.

While we would have no regret about the disappearance of the Davidoff Swiss Indoors, we would certainly deplore the downfall of the Basel tennis tournament. But, as Mr. Brennwald himself says in his interview: "There are more serious problems to deal with in our universe." Such as the problems of deforestation, poverty, illness and premature death that are plaguing the planet, with particular burden placed on low income countries, and to which tobacco use is a very significant contributor.