Puma says boycotts didn’t prompt its Israeli soccer exit

In a bit of news that is awkwardly timed to say the least, Puma will no longer sponsor the Israel Football Association (IFA), or Israel’s national soccer team, after next year.

The German sneaker giant says the decision, first reported by the Financial Timeswas made for financial reasons, not political reasons.

“The review of the existing list of national teams along with certain KPIs such as advertising and participation in major international tournaments led to some changes,” the company said in a statement released to Quartz.

A Jerusalem Post op-ed suggested that Israel’s men’s under-20 team, which finished third at its World Cup debut this year, was a “Cinderella story”. The national men’s team is world no. 75 by FIFA. The women’s team is ranked 70th.

A different kind of football campaign

Since 2005, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement formally organizes calls to boycott several global companieson the grounds that they support Israeli settlement activities on Palestinian land considered illegal by much of the international community. It urged consumers to avoid Puma since 2018when the company began its sponsorship of the IFA.

BDS targeted Puma because the IFA controls football activities that take place on settlement land. Pro-Palestinian groups have renewed focus on organizations called out by BDS in the wake of Israel’s military response to the October 7 attacks from the Gaza Strip. Those attacks killed 1,200 people; the Israeli response killed 18,000.

Although the IFA told the FT that attempts to link Puma’s decision with pro-Palestinian boycotts were “pathetic” because the IFA had rejected an option to extend his contract until 2026, BDS took credit anyway.

“The years of relentless, global BDS pressure on PUMA and the damage to its image should be a lesson to all companies that support Israeli apartheid that complicity has consequences,” the group said in a statement.