Cigarette Ads Snuffed Out

Marlboro Country got a little smaller Tuesday.

Philip Morris Inc. agreed to stop placing cigarette ads in stadiums and arenas where they can be telecast during pro sports events. Government lawyers asserted the signs were designed to circumvent the 1971 ban on televised cigarette advertising.

The company denied it violated or intended to violate the ban. Nevertheless, it agreed to move ads for Marlboros and its other cigarette brands away from the sidelines, the player entrances and other areas routinely televised during professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey games.

The government also is looking into other cigarette advertising on television, officials said.

“The department believed there were obvious violations of the advertising ban, some of them flagrant,” said Assistant Attorney General Frank W. Hunger, head of the civil division. He cited a Marlboro sign at the scorer’s table in Madison Square Garden during New York Knicks basketball games.

Philip Morris was told by the Garden in advance the sign would be “clearly visible on all NY Knicks cablecasts (and) telecasts emanating from Madison Square Garden as well as on sports news programs,” the government said in court papers. The papers said the Garden later wrote Philip Morris that the ad had received an average of 2 minutes, 43 seconds of TV coverage during Knicks games in November 1993.

Karen Daragan, Philip Morris spokeswoman, said, “I can’t confirm we got such a letter.”

After the Garden case was resolved last April, Hunger said, “We discovered a number of other signs at professional sports arenas which we thought had been positioned so as to obtain significant television coverage.”

During the 1993 and 1994 seasons, the government said in court papers, Philip Morris’ cigarette signs appeared in televised sports coverage in 13 football stadiums, 14 baseball parks and five basketball arenas.

During the 1994-95 football season, Candlestick Park in San Francisco placed a Marlboro ad behind the uprights so it was visible when balls were kicked into the end zone during San Francisco 49ers games.

At Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium, a Marlboro sign was placed just above the left-field fence where it was visible during TV coverage of Atlanta Braves baseball games.