Palestine/Israel: PUMA announces end of sponsorship of Israel Football Association after years of boycott pressure over complicity in illegal settlements in Palestine
Alisdare Hickson
"Puma to end sponsorship of Israel’s national football team in 2024", 12 December 2023
...Puma will stop sponsoring Israel’s national football team in 2024, according to a company spokesperson.
The move was planned since last year and is not related to consumer boycott calls against Israel amid the Gaza war, the spokesperson for the German sportswear firm said on Tuesday.
Puma has long faced boycott calls over its brand alliance with the Israel Football Association (IFA), but such calls have intensified during Israel’s two-month offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 18,000 Palestinians.
...a Puma spokesperson said the company’s contracts with several federations, including Serbia and Israel, were due to expire in 2024 and would not be renewed...
An internal Puma memo viewed by the Financial Times, which first reported the news, also confirmed the shake-up.
The memo said Puma would continue to “evaluate all other existing partnerships as well as any other upcoming opportunities to ensure we have a strong roster of national teams”, the newspaper reported.
Puma first signed its contract with the IFA to provide kit to players in 2018.
Since then, the company has faced boycott calls from activists, who say the IFA also includes teams based in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law...