The absolute truth: Alcohol companies sponsored disproportionately more queer Pride festivals than July Fourth festivals in 2019

Abstract

Introduction

Despite known disparities in alcohol use among queer communities in the United States, little is known about the extent to which alcohol companies sponsor queer Pride festivals each June. This study aimed to (1) examine the nature and extent of alcohol sponsorship of Pride in 2019 and (2) compare the prevalence of alcohol sponsorship for Pride versus Fourth of July festivals.

Methods

We identified Pride festivals through InterPride’s 2019 Pride Radar Report and Fourth of July festivals by searching Google. Researchers recorded each festival’s name and location, then sorted their sponsors into ten categories. We adjusted for overall population count and same-sex couple count estimates; and only included cities in our sample that hosted both Pride and Fourth of July festivals in 2019.

Results

Researchers identified 207 Pride and 154 Fourth of July festivals in 45 states and 129 cities, which included 4,643 Pride and 972 Fourth of July festival sponsors. Pride festivals had a significantly higher percentage of alcohol sponsors (9.1% (95% CI: 9.0%, 9.1%)) compared to Fourth of July festivals (2.0% (95% CI: 1.9%, 2.2%)) (p < 0.001). We also found a significant interaction between the prevalence of alcohol sponsors and US region.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate a greater need to understand the extent to which alcohol marketing at Pride celebrations contributes to alcohol use.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Additional data can inform the sponsorship policies of Pride festivals and enable festival organizers to make informed choices about alcohol sponsors and their marketing limits.

Keywords:

• Alcohol sponsorship
• alcohol use
• health disparities
• LGBQIA
• Pride
• TGNC

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge and thank the following staff members and research assistants: Nathalie Lissain, Emmanuella Kobara, Kaicy Naranjo, Zora Hall, Diego Quintana Licona, and Ashley Tang. Each of them helped screen capture sponsorship information found on hundreds of official festival websites. They also helped code those sponsorships for both Pride and Fourth of July festivals.

Availability of data and material

Data available upon request from corresponding author.

Authors’ contributions

All authors originated the study idea. Josh Arshonsky led the data collection, and he and Marie Bragg led the writing. Pasquale Rummo led the analysis. All authors edited and approved the final article.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Notes

1 For this article, we use “LGBTQIA+” and the umbrella term “queer” to refer to people with diverse sexual orientations (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, or questioning, intersexual, asexual, etc.) and gender identities given both terms are widely used to honor individual differences in people’s preferred term.