While India cheered every six and no-ball during the ICC Men’s World Cup 2023, an invisible game was being played right on our screens, one with devastating consequences for public health.
According to a damning new study led by the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (ICMR-NICPR), a staggering 80.9 percent of all advertisements on OTT platforms during the cricket World Cup promoted tobacco, alcohol, and high-fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products. With over 422 million viewers exposed, the magnitude of this influence is enormous.
Conducted by a joint team from ICMR-NICPR, AIIMS New Delhi, Vital Strategies, and the Institute of Public Health Bengaluru, the research reveals how digital loopholes are being ruthlessly exploited to push harmful products, particularly towards children.
This is not just an advertising problem. It is a full-blown crisis where profit trumps public health, and where elites live clean while the middle class lives clogged arterially and algorithmically.
Cricket And Capitalism
Cricket in India is not just a sport. It is a religion, and advertisers know it. The research analysed 341 hours of streaming across 48 World Cup matches. It found that during India’s matches, 90.7 per cent of advertisements were for harmful products.
Among surrogate tobacco ads, 86.7 per cent aired specifically during India’s games. The timing is not a coincidence; it’s a strategic ambush on the nation’s most captivated audience.
Dr Prashant Kumar Singh, lead author and senior scientist at ICMR-NICPR, rightly calls this “the first systematic evidence from a low- and middle-income country showing how sporting events have become vehicles for promoting products that contribute to non-communicable diseases.” The game is not just about runs anymore; it is about return on investment, at the cost of public health.
The Loophole That’s Legalised Poison
India has long banned direct tobacco and alcohol advertisements under laws like the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), 2003, and the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, 1995.
But OTT platforms have quietly become a fertile ground for bypassing these rules through surrogate ads. Companies now use products like bottled water, music CDs, and event sponsorships with familiar logos and colours to sneak in alcohol and tobacco branding.
Dr Shalini Singh, director of ICMR-NICPR and senior author of the study, warned, “Commercial interests are undermining public health through unregulated digital platforms.”
These platforms, often headquartered abroad, operate beyond the traditional reach of Indian regulators. In the absence of updated digital health frameworks, businesses continue to exploit the grey areas and sell lifestyle diseases with glossy edits and celebrity endorsements.
Junk In, Sickness Out
One of the most telling parts of the study is how deeply these advertisements are aimed at India’s massive middle class. Over 60 per cent of the ads aired during breaks targeted products commonly consumed by children, potato chips, chocolates, instant noodles, and biscuits. These aren’t just snacks; they are future medical bills in foil wrappers.
The aspirational class is now absorbing not just Western aesthetics and brands, but also their obesity and lifestyle disease burdens. India is already facing a ticking time bomb of non-communicable diseases.
According to WHO data, NCDs account for 63 per cent of all deaths in India. Yet the very platforms that reach our drawing rooms are silently encouraging behaviours that lead to diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.
Celebrities, Complicity, And The Cost Of Fame
Endorsements add fuel to this fire. The study found that 17.5 per cent of these unhealthy product ads featured Bollywood actors, and another 17 per cent featured cricket celebrities. Children idolise them. Families trust them. But these icons often lend their faces to products they likely wouldn’t allow in their own homes.
This is not just about ethics, it’s about economics. Dr Singh called it a “public health crisis hiding in plain sight,” driven by elite complicity. The irony is glaring: the same celebrities who post about fitness, yoga, and organic living on Instagram are nudging the masses towards packaged poison. It’s a tale of two diets: green juices in penthouses and MSG-laced noodles on every kitchen shelf.
Also Read: Why Are Young Indians Facing Increasing Chronic Diseases?
The First Casualties Of Capitalist Marketing
The most chilling finding in the ICMR-led research is the deliberate targeting of children during peak ad slots. In a country where 1 in 10 children is obese, marketing HFSS foods during cricket matches isn’t harmless; it’s criminal. With no ad blockers on television and lax parental supervision on OTT platforms, children become the prime consumers of carcinogenic dreams.
What’s worse is the cumulative impact. Children form habits early, and repetitive exposure to these advertisements wires their taste preferences and perceptions.
The study clearly shows a disparity in patterns more surrogate ads aired during matches featuring India than those of other countries, indicating a well-oiled marketing machine aiming directly at the hearts, minds, and bellies of Indian families.
A System That Punishes The Poor And Protects The Powerful
What emerges from this study is not just a critique of advertising but of the system itself. Capitalism rewards the companies that sell the most addictive products, even if they kill slowly. The elites can afford detox retreats and gym memberships while the poor and middle class are left with decades of poor health and overburdened public hospitals.
The researchers are clear in their demand: immediate policy intervention, stricter enforcement of digital advertising norms, and safeguards for children.
But unless there is political will to challenge the corporations funding our entertainment and elections, the status quo will continue. As Dr Shalini Singh emphasised, “Updated regulatory frameworks and comprehensive monitoring of OTT platforms are non-negotiable.”
Cricket May Win, But India Loses
The World Cup 2023 may have brought stadiums to life, but it also ushered in an advertising blitz that’s slowly killing us. In a country already struggling to reduce premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by 25 per cent by 2025, these unchecked digital promotions are sabotaging national health goals.
The real scoreboard is not the runs on the field but the rise in diabetes, heart attacks, and cancers.
Until regulation catches up with digital advertising and until ethics trump endorsements, India’s middle class will keep cheering for centuries while being quietly buried under disease statistics. This is not just a bad health policy. This is a systemic betrayal wrapped in six-second glamour shots. And as the research rightly shows, this is not just a glitch in the system. It is the system.
Images: Google Images
Sources: Indian Express, Economic Times, Business Today
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: cricket advertising crisis, digital health loopholes, surrogate advertising India, lifestyle diseases, capitalism and health, junk food marketing, OTT platform regulation, protect children from ads, India public health, celebrity ad ethics
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