PUMA ended its sponsorship with the Israel Federation

The year 2024 is coming to an end and with it the contract between PUMA and the Israel Football Association (IFA), for which the apparel brand has produced the national team's official match jerseys as technical sponsor since 2018. The decision not to renew the contract was expected by PUMA twelve months ago, in a way and especially at a time that is quite suspicious in the context of the reference (more on this later). While six years ago the handover from one German brand (adidas) to another took place in-house, from January next year - with an economic downsizing of around 40 per cent - the baton will end up in the hands of Erreà.

The Bavarian company explained the decision as part of a broader overhaul of its marketing strategy, which is aimed at fewer partnerships. However, many observers, including members of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, have labelled the end of the relationship between PUMA and IFA as a victory for the pressure and boycott campaigns against the brand, which is accused of indirectly supporting the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories through economic activities in illegal settlements. 

PUMA's decision

PUMA's decision to end its collaboration with IFA was announced in 2023, more than a year before the end of the agreement - a timing that is certainly not in line with practise. Indeed, it is rare for brands to publicly announce the termination of such a sponsorship relationship, let alone twelve months in advance. The impression given by BDS in a statement in recent days is that the German brand felt the need to distance itself from Israel for reasons that are not hard to imagine in the current political context.

BDS has for years accused PUMA of profiting, albeit indirectly, from complicity with Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories (West Bank and East Jerusalem), which are illegal under international law. This rhetoric has intensified since October 2023 with the start of the military occupation of Gaza, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives and displaced two million Palestinians from their homes in thirteen months in the name of crushing Hamas. In January last year, the International Court of Justice labelled the Israeli army's operations as possible “genocidal acts”. After the conflict spread to Lebanon, the International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense minister of Tel Aviv respectively.

The conflict in the Middle East has reached the sporting arena, as we saw, for example, in the desert in the Paris stands at the France-Israel match, the demonstrations before the match in Udine against the Italian national team and the demonstrations by so many organised fan groups. Initiatives (boycotts of shops, brands, events) and appeals (petitions) are also driving brands like PUMA into a corner and highlighting the reputational and therefore business risks of neutrality, which is becoming increasingly difficult to justify in the face of public pressure. PUMA is not the only multinational company to be confronted with similar demands. adidas also ended its cooperation with the Israeli Football Association in 2018 for the same reason.

The relationship of sports and politics

Over the course of the 20th century, sport has increasingly proven to be a powerful megaphone, capable of disseminating messages of various kinds far beyond the confines of stadiums, arenas, playing fields and related (real and virtual) environments. It is not just about athletes being “more than just athletes", as they like to say in the USA, but about a global space in which civil, political and economic concerns find extraordinary resonance. Football in particular, thanks to its cross-sectional popularity in the social fabric (on all continents), is a platform that offers unique opportunities for engagement with the public, and not just because of its wide reach; it is in fact an ecosystem fuelled by the passion of fans and spectators and therefore offers the chance to put the recipients of any message - be it advertising, awareness campaigns, sponsorship or so-called “sportswashing" - on fertile ground.

Not only the main players in this business, the footballers, but also political personalities and institutions as well as socially committed companies and organisations use these media and popularise power. In different ways, depending on the objective: penetration by the private sector follows the - more or less linear - tracks of sponsorship, of which the Emirates airline has provided us with an unprecedented example over the last decade; awareness-raising initiatives involving athletes, clubs or associations - such as the (less spontaneous or useful) initiatives for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women - tend to fit the simpler pattern of exploiting the sounding board; when it comes to politics, on the other hand, the discourse is more pronounced.

States can use major sporting events to burnish their image and distance themselves from controversial issues such as human rights violations. In this way, they can change the international perception of their respective governments and divert attention away from issues that have a negative impact on their reputation. We have seen this with geopolitical events such as the FIFA World Cup in Qatar (2022) or the recent Olympic Games in China (2008) and Russia (2014). The World Cups in Argentina (1978), Italy (1934) and the Third Reich Games in Berlin (1936) go back even further in time.

If what has been said so far concerns the logic of those who associate their image with competitions, teams, athletes and facilities in order to profit from them, at the other end of the spectrum are those who choose to sever such ties. The intention is usually to convey a message that is at odds with the values of the event, the target reality or the host country, to express a dissenting opinion on issues that concern them, or even just to please their audience from an ethical/ideological point of view. So what is meant by the term “boycott”?

The history of boycotts in sport

Mostly originating in political crises or friction between nations, boycotts are in every sense an exercise in “soft power” on the part of governments, usually at major events such as the Olympic Games. At the 1956 Games, for example, several representatives were absent from Melbourne: China (due to the autonomous presence of Taiwan), Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland (due to the Soviet invasion of Hungary), Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon (due to the Suez crisis). The Cold War years are even more symbolic in this respect, as shown by the absence of Team USA, West Germany, Israel and some sixty other countries from the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow (due to the invasion of Afghanistan) and the withdrawal of the selections of the USSR, East Germany and other Soviet bloc countries from the next edition in Los Angeles four years later. Jimmy Carter, then President of the USA, said that “sport cannot ignore the invasion of a sovereign nation: The boycott is a message of peace.”

In parallel, brands and sponsors are also intervening in this area, using the breach or non-renewal of commercial contracts or other various positions as a means of defining brand values. An example was given to us in 2022 with the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, when several European football teams, including Manchester United and Schalke04, gave their Russian sponsors the boot; a dynamic that affected a variety of disciplines and led to a massive ousting of Moscow from the Western sporting world.

In most cases, boycotts by private players are about the opportunity to make a name for themselves and, above all, about ethical or political positions that are seen as strategic. It is a dynamic where there is a subtle balance between spontaneous compliance, corporate reputation and market calculation, and where external pressure - from consumers, but also from global associations and movements - can play a decisive role, transforming commercial neutrality into a cultural battleground.

The PUMA-Israel case reminds us once again how sport can become a symbolic battleground where brands, institutions and movements fight for control of the narrative. In all of this, sponsors must reconcile marketing objectives and commercial strategies with an ethical commitment that audiences are increasingly demanding today. In short, every contract implies a certain attitude.