Governments should ban alcoholic-beverage firms from sponsoring sports teams and sporting events, which could instead be supported by taxes on alcohol products, according to researchers.

Science Daily reported Nov. 11 that researchers Kypros Kypri of Australia's Newcastle University and Kerry O'Brien of The University of Manchester in Great Britain wrote in the December 2009 issue of the journal Addiction that the alcohol industry has ignored their 2008 report showing a link between alcohol sponsorship of sports and high-risk drinking among participants.

"The latest moves by the major sporting codes in Australia to lobby against the regulation of alcohol sponsorship of sport show that these bodies remain in denial of alcohol-related problems in their sports," said Krypi. "In addition, it is clear that these organizations have enormous vested interests in continuing to receive alcohol money and government should be careful to act in the public interest rather than to cave in to the sports and Big Booze."

"Sport administrators are sending mixed messages to participants and fans when, on the one hand, they embrace and peddle alcohol via their sport, while on the other they punish individual sport stars and fans when they display loutish behavior while intoxicated," added O'Brien.

The British Medical Association also has called for a ban on alcohol sports sponsorships.