Burger King Banned in Costa Rica

For the average bookie living in Costa Rica - hub of the billion dollar online gambling industry - Burger King makes up a vital part of daily dietary needs.  For a while though it appeared as if the Burger King might actually be banned in the peaceful Central American nation.

In the past, bookmakers have actually offered betting odds on whether the Burger King will score a touchdown as part of a slew of Super Bowl props.  Now he is no more.  Well, the King is not exactly going down without a fight. 

It all started last week when some government officials began to become annoyed by the television ads that the Burger King franchise was running in the country. One showed three mothers trying to run down the character, the Burger King, as he strolled along a city street. He leaped out of the way, and the women's car smashed up barrels of trash.

"We'll get you next time, King," one of the women shouted.

That commercial has already aired in the US without much in the way of any complaints.

The followup - "Hit Moms" showed the three women negotiating with a hired hitman to "off" the Burger King.  They were furious because their children preferred the Whopper over home cooked meals. 

The vice minister of the interior, Ana Duran, said the commercials on national TV trivialized violence.

The Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion on Friday published a letter from a mother asking how she was supposed to explain to her 5-year-old son why somebody was trying to kill the Burger King.

"It's outrageous that companies like Burger King make commercials using the promotion of killings in this country," the woman, Ingrid Moya Aguilar, wrote.

As AM Costa Rica points out:  Never mind that there are real bodies on television news shows almost every night.  Some security minister officials invoked an advertising law to ban the commercials Friday. They cited emotional damage to children.

Burger King officials were quick to react...not by abandoning the "Hit Moms" concept but rather by featuring new ads showing the censored commercial. 

There is a sad irony in that Costa Rica is a country where child poverty and abandonment runs rampant.  These youth live in the streets where the only life they know is one of crime.  Many of them form bands called chapulines ("grasshoppers"), gangs of youth who jump on unsuspecting pedestrians, knifing them and bludgeoning their victims. 

147.000 children in Costa Rica have to work to survive; 280.000 children of school age are not in to school. In the first semester of 2002, the PANI received 11,782 complaints of child abuse.

And Costa Rica is also a land where hitmen can be hired for just a few dollars.  Last year, two Canadians and a Costa Rican are being held on suspicion of  involvement in the "contract murder" of a sportsbook employee, 27-year-old Luis Muñoz Vargas.  He was accused of cheating the operators, who were credit bookies. 

Agents allege that the two Canadians along with the Costa Rican bodyguard set up a meeting with the victim, similar to how the "Hit Moms" negotiate to have the Burger King "dealt with". When Vargas arrived for the meeting in Desamparados centro, he was greeted with bullets and died later in hospital. 

Miami-based Burger King Holdings Inc. sent a statement to The Associated Press saying company officials have not been notified of the action by the Costa Rican government, but that Burger King is sensitive to cultural and geographic concerns wherever it operates.

Whose next?  Jared?

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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher CCostigan@CostiganMedia.com

Originally published April 8, 2008 10:07 am EST