Yamaha is going smokeless in 2006. A few days ago, Yamaha announced they were ending their sponsorship agreement with Altadis/Seita and their Fortuna and Gauloises brands of cigarettes. Evidently there has been a dispute between the parties which, according to Altadis/Seita, has not yet been resolved and may end up in court, but Yamaha seems to have made up their mind. The Gauloises name has been a familiar sight for some time and they were sponsors of the Yamaha racing effort for the past three years. What the reasons are for the split was not mentioned in Yamaha’s press release. Was it just business or is there something else?
Remember Winston Cup? How about the Skoal Bandits in drag racing? Formula One had a lot of tobacco sponsorships, too. Heck, when’s the last time you saw Joe Camel? It’s getting harder and harder to find tobacco advertised anywhere in racing and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. When racing is looking for sponsor dollars and tobacco companies are trying to spend in the few venues left to them, it would seem to be a natural pairing. But there’s another issue to consider.
There are no smokers here in the palatial offices of The Kneeslider, but I think smoking should be a personal choice. Many non smokers are vehement in their antagonism towards the sight or smell of smoke anywhere and make no bones about it. Smoking is classified as risky behavior, a dangerous habit to be quashed and advertising smokes anywhere becomes unacceptable. Well, if you’re a rider, this idea of stopping all kinds of risky behavior by those who know better than you how you should run your life is more than a little troublesome. It’s been asked before, once one kind of personal behavior is deemed by the annointed to be risky and then outlawed for your own good, what’s next? Just a thought.
Yamaha Racing press release
photo credit: Yamaha
sigint says
I think we’re seeing the end of big tabacco. Even Philip Morris seems to be wanting to back away from cigs and focus their other divisions (because of all their underage smoking commercials and such). I doubt they’ll outlaw smoking. They tried with alcohol and look where that got them (in the US anyways).
aaron says
Isn’t Phillip Morris dead? last I heard, the world hated them enough that the company changed their name to something like OmniCorp or Erectria or something…Altria-that’s it! (if you can’t get investors when people know what you do…pretend you’re a different faceless corporation in the hopes that people won’t avoid investing)
anyways, this only suprised me because it came a year too late. the story i heard was that when rossi signed for yamaha, the contract stated that the team would run tabacco free in the second year. reportedly this was the difference between yamaha and ducati. ducati would not drop malboro for rossi, yamaha agreed to run smoke free. why it took two years vs one? who knows… maybe yamaha’s decision was based on rossi’s contract renewal this year?
doug says
Outlawing behavior & restricting behavior can sometimes be very close.
Smoking has been banned in all public buildings in WA state, thankfully. I can go to a gig in a bar & not smell like an ashtray in the morning.
The lobbying groups, local clubs, publications, individual riders, etc. would do our sport some good to reach out to the riders who:
– do stand-up wheelies on the freeway
– maintain the idea “louder-is-better-even-though-it-sounds-like-garbage”
– the mob affect the mass of riders at rallys has on a community. Your rally doesn’t mean you own the town and can do whatever the hell you want, even if the tourism dollars are large.
sigint says
Naw. I think they’re pushing their cheese line more or something.