Football and CBD: A complicated relationship

A couple of years ago, Hannah Deacon took a call from a football agent.

Deacon, who had no background in football, was surprised. What she did have, however, was a deep knowledge of cannabidiol (CBD), a legalised chemical extracted from cannabis — and this is what the agent wanted to talk to her about. Some of his clients were interested in starting a company selling CBD, which promises to help users overcome stress and anxiety, and he wanted her advice.

Deacon was appalled. It was her impression that the group were trying to make a quick buck out of something they did not understand. She refused to get involved.

“They weren’t passionate about it,” Deacon tells The Athletic. “These are patients’ lives we’re talking about…”

The incident was instructive, both about the controversy attached to discussions around CBD and how football, and footballers, have become one of its biggest marketplaces.

In the UK, former footballers have been at the forefront of marketing CBD, particularly on social media. Former Premier League players such as Matthew Le Tissier, John Hartson, Paul Merson, John Aldridge and Dean Windass all say it has helped transform their lives; from a more recent vintage, the ex-England and Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland is also a strong advocate. Former England international David Beckham, meanwhile, had a minority stake in the cannabinoid product firm Cel AI before selling in February.

In many ways, football is an obvious marketplace for CBD. Former professionals habitually complain of managing pain to some degree because of old injuries, while many have spoken about the mental challenges that come when they no longer have the adrenaline rush of matches that have defined their lives for so long.

Anthony Fowler, the former boxer and cousin of ex-Liverpool and England striker Robbie Fowler, runs Supreme CBD, a company which lists Le Tissier, Merson, Kirkland and Windass as ambassadors. He says former footballers are also dealing with the cold reality that they no longer have their clubs around to solve their aches and pains.

“Footballers get anxiety, like anyone else — arguably more because of the public pressure they’re facing,” he tells The Athletic.

Although Fowler thinks CBD could also help active players with injury prevention, pointing to evidence that it can ease inflammation, active footballers have been less willing to openly talk about any experiences they may have had with CBD — despite the fact it was taken off the banned substance list by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), as well as United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD), in 2018.

According to one football agent, who would like to remain anonymous to protect the identity of his clients, the fact that cannabis remains prohibited explains why current players are reluctant to admit trying it. Although it seems unlikely CBD will get banned again, if it did, that player’s reputation could be damaged by association. “There isn’t enough distance yet since coming off the banned list,” says the agent.

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CBD is not a new product. It is an active ingredient in cannabis and derived either from the hemp plant or created artificially in a laboratory. As opposed to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), another part of the cannabis plant, it does not create a ‘high’ and is also non-addictive.

CBD’s medicinal use, largely to treat minor pain or ease anxiety, can be traced to Central Asia, where a study in the journal Science Advances recently suggested it formed part of burial rituals as early as 750 BC.

More recently, CBD has become a commercialised product, sold on the open market usually in the form of gummies — small sweets that can be chewed — capsules or oil infused with CBD, which can be applied to the tongue. Vapes, creams and even bath bombs containing CBD are also available.

Its users can be evangelical about what they believe it has done for them. Aldridge, the former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland striker, insists he is sleeping better than ever since using CBD but a significant amount of his social media timeline involves responses to accusations that he is only promoting the product due to alleged financial incentives coming his way. Aldridge is an ambassador for Supreme CBD.

In September, Aldridge described himself on X as a “man of integrity” insisting he wouldn’t advise others if it didn’t work. “Thousands of people” were now using it according to Aldridge, who claimed they were getting “brilliant results”.

Aldridge told The Athletic that he had encouraged family and friends to try CBD oil, which has done “wonders” for his life. He says he has struggled for years with carpal tunnel syndrome (a condition that creates numbness in the wrist) as well as back inflammation, but since using CBD he has had fewer problems.

“A lot of people are cynical about it, possibly because of its connection with cannabis,” Aldridge says. “It’s done me no harm whatsoever. I wake up in a much better mood. It agrees with me.”

There are, indeed, many sceptics. A study led by the University of Bath this year found there was “no evidence” that CBD reduced chronic pain, describing it as a “waste of money and potentially harmful to health”.

Sixteen people were involved in this research and the Bath researchers concluded CBD was “no better than a placebo at relieving pain”.

Deacon suggests this is where the conversation about CBD gets confused. She says that while there is anecdotal evidence from some users that CBD can help with mild pain depending on the dosage, chronic pain is a different matter, a problem that is more likely to be managed by controlled use of THC.

According to Deacon, the findings relating to CBD would be different if an assessment was instead made about how it affects stress and anxiety. “Good CBD can have a positive impact on the lives of some people,” she insists.

Deacon’s experience with cannabis is deeply personal. It began when her son, Alfie, suffered from an epileptic seizure at eight months old. Over the next six years, as she became his full-time carer and tried to save his life, they moved from the south of England to the Netherlands, where Alfie started using prescriptive cannabis in an attempt to bring his condition under control. He now plays a fully active role in school and has not had a fit for more than four years.

Having campaigned in the UK to increase awareness about the potential benefits of cannabis, she has since worked with doctors and pharmacies.

“Like any industry, there are responsible companies and less responsible companies,” Deacon explains. “When it comes to the production of CBD, some of the less responsible ones are accused of not paying attention to signposting exactly what is in a product that includes too much THC. So I can understand why current footballers would be reluctant to use it generally.”

Deacon says she does not work with any CBD companies. She stresses the conversation around the compound in football remains controversial because of concerns about its potential risks, quality control and labelling accuracy.

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What is undeniable is that CBD is now big business. In 2019, an article in the New York Times suggested that in the United States alone, the CBD industry was projected to be worth $16billion (£12bn) by 2025.

There have since been distribution challenges due to state laws but in 2021, a report commissioned by the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry found the UK’s CBD market had more than doubled in just two years and was now valued at £690m. By 2022, the UK stood as the second-largest consumer cannabinoid market in the world, behind the U.S.

The trigger for CBD going mainstream came in 2018, when the United States passed the Farm Bill under federal law, removing hemp (cannabis with no more than 0.3 per cent of THC) from a list of controlled substances.

Two years later, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that CBD should not be considered a narcotic drug and in 2022, CBD was classified as a ‘novel food’ by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA). This created new opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to speculate in an emerging market.

One of them was Anthony Fowler, who won middleweight gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He launched Supreme CBD, which has recently relocated to a bigger site in Liverpool due to its product’s popularity.

Fowler tells The Athletic that in 2018, while he was still boxing, another CBD company approached him about sponsorship but he was nervous because rule changes had only recently come into place. Reassured, he used it for the first time after suffering from jaw pain following a sparring session in the ring. “It was faster than morphine,” he says.

Fowler launched Supreme CBD in 2020 and says he gave up on boxing because of the scale of interest, with 120,000 potential customers now on the company’s database. Jade Jones, Britain’s Olympic champion taekwondo fighter, is another sportsperson listed as a client on its website.

Fowler claims Supreme CBD’s popularity comes down to pricing, the fact that it has the strongest strain of CBD, imported from Las Vegas, and that his product “has no side-effects. It just makes people feel better”.

He is adamant that he has not targeted the football market, even though former footballers are among his product’s most vocal advocates.

Their promotion has caused its own controversy. In February, Supreme CBD was found to have breached UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rules by not making clear that Le Tissier and Hartson were being rewarded for their posts and for making banned medical claims.

Le Tissier, who acknowledged to the ASA that he receives commission on CBD products sold with his personalised online code, and Hartson, who said Supreme CBD paid him a small amount for the use of his social media platforms but that he was no longer working with the company, said they would clearly label any future posts as marketing material, as did Fowler.

Kirkland, an ambassador for Supreme CBD, insists he had taken his time before drawing any conclusions about what their products could do for him, before using social media to highlight what he had found.

In 2022, Kirkland, who retired in 2016, said in an interview with London newspaper The Times that he was over the worst of an addiction to painkillers that almost destroyed his life, leading to him contemplating suicide.

He explained to The Athletic that he is open to paid promotional work for CBD products, but only if they have affected him positively. He says they have helped treat anxiety. “I’d only ever recommend something that has improved the quality of my life,” he says. “I’ve recommended CBD to friends and family and they’ve had similar experiences to me. It’s something I know works.”

Like Aldridge, he insists, “I have never slept so well in my life,” though since turning to Supreme CBD two and a half years ago, he has also committed himself to an exercise regimen, including ice therapy. “CBD is just one of the things that has made me feel better,” he adds.

Kirkland says he can go weeks without using CBD but sometimes, he will take four to five gummies a day before applying oil to his tongue at night. He has also suggested on social media that CBD has helped ease some of the back problems that led to his painkiller addiction.

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CBD has many advocates but there is still unease around its use, especially among sportspeople.

When invited to comment by The Athletic about why CBD was removed from the banned list in 2018, WADA said that following “consultation with scientific, medical and anti-doping experts, including a review of medical and scientific evidence, it was determined that CBD did not satisfy two of three key criteria”.

This related to questions about whether it could 1) enhance sporting performance, 2) represent an actual or potential health risk to the athlete or 3) violate the spirit of the sport. WADA reviews its list of banned substances annually and can add to that list at any time, in exceptional circumstances.

In the UK, at least, CBD’s cause has arguably not been helped by some of its higher-profile advocates backing other, more controversial causes. Le Tissier, one of the earliest champions of CBD’s benefits, has been largely ostracised from football after amplifying a wide range of conspiracy theories online, including denying the war in Ukraine. Fowler, meanwhile, has been a vocal critic of the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

One psychologist with a background in medical science, who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity in the interests of client confidentiality, believes CBD tends to be attractive to people who are already inclined to be anti-establishment and, therefore, wary of the big pharmaceutical companies.

“The danger is people start putting faith in that instead of traditional research-based evidence, which isn’t sexy and doesn’t sell,” they said. “You’ve got chronic pain? The option is to go on a 16-day management course. Alternatively, you can take these ‘magic drops’ that are new to the market that the authorities don’t really want you to know about.”

Separately, there are concerns over regulation — or a lack of it. “There are a lot of people out there doing the market harm,” Dom Day, a former rugby union player who set up a CBD company, FourFive, with fellow ex-pro George Kruis, told Forbes in 2020. “There’s a lot of press about companies that have way too high THC levels and too low CBD levels.”

There are broader worries about what happens until the industry reaches a point where there is more control. The psychologist contacted by The Athletic describes this period as being like “the Wild West”, referencing examples of CBD companies that are known for putting very low amounts of CBD, or possibly even none, in the product.

“What you don’t want is people putting their faith into something that doesn’t work at the expense of something that really does,” the psychologist added. “You combine that with a lack of regulation, and there’s a problem.”

In 2023, the FSA in the UK attempted to get a grip on the industry by cutting the recommended daily intake of CBD for adults to 10mg. Yet Fowler is confident that regulation will not harm the growth of his business. He believes that greater education on the benefits of CBD will encourage more people to try it.

If that happens, maybe an active footballer will be among them — and should one emerge as an advocate, perhaps we will discover that interest in CBD has not yet peaked.

(Top photos: Getty; Chloe Knott — Danehouse, iStock; design: Dan Goldfarb)

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