The company says the move, planned since last year, has nothing to do with calls for a boycott against it in the context of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Sports brand Puma will stop sponsoring the Israel national football team in 2024, according to a company spokesperson.
The move had been planned since last year and is not linked to calls for a consumer boycott against Israel in the context of the war in Gaza, the spokesperson for the German sportswear company said on Tuesday.
Puma has long been the subject of calls for a boycott over its brand alliance with the Israel Football Federation (IFA), but those calls intensified during Israel’s two-month offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 18,000 Palestinians.
In an emailed statement to the Reuters news agency, 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.
The spokesperson said Puma would soon announce deals with several new national teams, as part of its “less, bigger, better strategy”.
An internal Puma memo seen by the Financial Times, which was the first to report the news, also confirmed the reshuffle.
The memo said Puma will continue “to evaluate all other existing partnerships as well as any other upcoming opportunities to ensure we have a strong national team roster,” the newspaper reported.
Puma first signed its contract with the IFA to provide equipment to players in 2018.
Since then, the company has faced calls for a boycott 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.
Global companies supporting Israel have faced growing boycott calls from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement before and during the Gaza war.
Earlier this week, fashion company Zara pulled an advertising campaign from its website after drawing backlash for appearing to mimic scenes of suffering in Gaza and sparking calls for a boycott from pro-Palestinian activists.
