Blackburn Rovers has said its sponsorship deal with a vaping brand is not at odds with encouraging healthy lifestyle choices for children.
It follows criticism and suggestions from MPs that it could encourage children to vape.
The football club defended its deal with Totally Wicked, which sees the vaping brand’s logo featured on its players’ shirts, and said it has seen no evidence the sponsoship encourages children to vape.
The Championship football team and Totally Wicked, which last month announced their partnership will continue for a sixth season, argue vaping plays a role in helping adults to stop smoking.
If we’re serious about dealing with the harms to children and young people, we really should expect that sports clubs are going to be somewhere that they can see positive imagery— Kirsten Oswald
During a House of Commons debate on children and vaping on Wednesday, Conservative chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee Steve Brine said the club should “look themselves in the mirror”.
Speaking from the SNP frontbench, Kirsten Oswald, also named the team saying: “We would find that absolutely unacceptable if a football club came out with cigarette branding on their shirts, and I cannot understand why it would be any more acceptable for a football club to come out with vaping advertising.”
She added: “This is really unacceptable. If we’re serious about dealing with the harms to children and young people, we really should expect that sports clubs are going to be somewhere that they can see positive imagery.”
Blackburn Rovers released a statement on Thursday defending the sponsorship deal.
We have and will continue to carry out education and awareness initiatives to our fans and communities around the positive role that vaping can play in reducing adult smoking rates— Blackburn Rovers spokesperson
A Blackburn Rovers spokesperson said: “At no point during our long-standing relationship has the idea that the Totally Wicked brand might appeal disproportionately to children been raised and we have seen no evidence to suggest that our sponsorship has encouraged an uptake of vaping among children.
“Totally Wicked lead the way in providing the products that have enabled hundreds of thousands of smokers to choose a safer alternative.
“Every adult smoker who finds vaping through our association is a positive outcome, but the products should be accessible to over-18s only. To this end, Totally Wicked adopt strict age verification protocols, as required with any age-restricted category.
“Both Blackburn Rovers and Totally Wicked advocate that vaping has a positive and proven role in supporting the reduction and ultimate eradication of smoking within our communities.
“We have and will continue to carry out education and awareness initiatives to our fans and communities around the positive role that vaping can play in reducing adult smoking rates. This continued awareness drive is a very positive outcome for our long-standing partnership.
“As our principal club sponsor, the Totally Wicked logo will appear on the front of our first team home, away and third shirts, and on adult replica kits, but not on any playing shirts or replica shirts for under-18s.
“As a football club at the heart of its local community, we acknowledge we have a responsibility to encourage healthy life choices for children and we do not see that raising awareness of the positive role that vaping plays in helping to eradicate smoking among adults and empowering more people to quit smoking for good conflicts with this in any way.”
A spokesperson for Totally Wicked said: “Totally Wicked has proudly supported both Blackburn Rovers Football Club and St Helens Rugby League club for many seasons.
“We are a business with our roots firmly planted in Blackburn, from our foundation in 2008 through to today.
“We have maintained throughout that time a clear purpose of supporting adult smokers with a transformative product set.
“Vaping has been evidenced by Public Health England (now the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities) as ‘95% safer than smoking’ continually since 2015.
“In combination with our partners, we are acutely aware of the responsibility we hold to ensure this often misunderstood sector is given the awareness that it deserves, and in turn the benefit it can provide to so many adult smokers within our communities is recognised.
“Whilst we recognise vaping is not without risk, every smoker that becomes aware of our sector and products represents an extremely positive association.
“Furthermore the Borough of Blackburn with Darwen sits above the national average for smoking rates at 15.5% vs 13.3%, and therefore any targeted benefit that takes place in reducing these rates as a result of our association is equally beneficial.”
