GAA & McDonalds: Catch and Kick
Name:
Catch and Kick Gaelic Football Programme
Sponsor:
Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in partnership with McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland.
In Brief
Recommendation:
We reject the Catch and Kick scheme as blatantly commercial and indicative of many trends around this issue. We urge that where found in schools, the branded materials by removed immediately or returned to their creators
Objective:
To “provide schools and clubs with the necessary equipment and materials to develop catching and kicking techniques” for Gaelic Football.
Classification:
Sponsored Educational Material
Year:
2003.
Past Record:
Writing on McDonald’s involvement in sports sponsorship elsewhere Jary (1999) states that,
By means of extensive PR - its sponsorship of sports events as well as its “associations” with sports stars and sports teams in its advertising - McDonald’s as a non-sporting corporation has positioned itself so that it feed on the potency of sport as a source of near magical signs. (p. 124)
In the year following Catch and Kick, McDonalds sponsored the “Lift and Strike’ scheme around the game of hurling and employed pop star Justin Timberlake to endorse it.
Materials:
Catch and Kick issued 3,000 primary schools with footballs, pumps, bibs, cones and kit bags as well as coaching manuals, score charts and assessment guides. Prominent on almost all materials is the trademark McDonald’s Golden Arch symbol, incorporated into a symbol of a yellow ball bouncing on red background. In wearing the bibs displaying the large ‘M’ logo synonymous with Mc Donald’s, children are seen to resemble sandwich board advertisements for the company.
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Low
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Comments:
In 2002 the Irish government suspended the P.E. equipment grant to schools. The following year P.E. equipment in 3,000 primary schools carried the logo of the largest fast food retailer in the world. McDonalds were, no doubt, “Lovin’ it”.
The equipment as noted carries the colours and logos of Mc Donald’s. The transferable nature of the equipment provided by McDonald’s increases the likelihood that children will be wearing their McDonald’s bibs outside of the scheme, whether the P.E. lesson is on athletics, basketball or soccer. Clearly, the positive association between fitness, sporting prowess and McDonald’s is offered to children, a group the company continues to aggressively target through television advertising.
In a newspaper interview in 2003 McDonald’s Ireland’s Head of Operations, claimed that the scheme “is not designed to sell Happy Meals, it’s designed to have more kids participate in sport.” However, he later admitted that “We’re here to sell a product and there’s absolutely no denying that”.
The involvement of McDonald’s in schools raises the important issue of childhood obesity. There is currently much public concern over research showing one in five Irish boys and girls to be overweight and one in twenty to be now obese. Catch and Kick once more placed the brand and logo of the world’s largest retailer of fast food before Irish schoolchildren, this time with the added imprimatur of the education system. At least one school in County Offaly has returned their equipment, believing it to contradict a “healthy eating” drive in the school. However, the material was accepted by the vast majority of the 3,000 schools selected for this programme.
Recommendation:
We reject the Catch and Kick scheme as blatantly commercial and indicative of many trends around this issue. We urge that where found in schools, the branded materials by removed immediately or returned to their creators.
The suspension of the P.E. equipment grant 3 years after introducing a new curriculum into Irish primary schools was a retrograde and damaging act by the government. Without adequate resources, schools are pressurised to accept a scheme which promotes a fast food company and makes a mockery out of health and nutrition education.
McDonalds’ Irelands’ Head of Operations justified this scheme saying; “We are in the business of selling food but at the same time I think every business has a social responsibility” A corporation like Mc Donald’s do have a social or corporate responsibility, however it should not be used as a smokescreen to gain more cheap marketing and publicity for the company at the expense of primary schools. Molnar (1996) writes that “corporations write off the cost of the “free” materials that carry their advertising messages as a tax-deductible expense”. (p.27) Companies should uphold their social responsibility but not expect to get advertising from it as well. No other parent who pays his or her taxes expects the same return.
As for the coaching manual, a non-commercial substitute exists in the pack developed by the GAA Games Development and Coaching Committee. Many teachers receive this pack through GAA coaching programme conducted in the Colleges of Education.The pack is also set out per the school streams: infants/1st-2nd/3rd-4th/ 5th-6th.
Imagine a scenario when main National Curriculum textbooks in food and nutrition were to be sponsored by, let us say, McDonald’s restaurants UK!
(Roberts, 1994, p. 83)
