Malaysian Arsenal Fans Call For Boycott Of New Kit Over Israeli-Founded Sponsor
Malaysian Arsenal fans are calling for a boycott of the club’s new 2026/27 jersey after the Premier League champions announced a sleeve sponsorship with Deel, a tech company co-founded by a French-Israeli entrepreneur who publicly expressed support for Israel after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
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Some Malaysian Arsenal fans are calling for a boycott of the club’s new 2026/27 jersey, after the English Premier League champions announced a sleeve sponsorship deal with Deel, a technology company co-founded by a French-Israeli entrepreneur.
The debate has divided Malaysian fans online — but solidarity with Palestine is rarely a debate here at all.
The sentiment on Malaysian social media has been blunt.
On Threads, one user who identified as an Arsenal supporter said he would be boycotting the new kit because of the club’s partnership with Deel.
“Guys, please don’t support what is wrong,” he wrote, adding a Palestinian flag emoji.
On Facebook, another fan was equally firm: “Even if you say you’re buying a copy, the Israeli company’s logo is still on it. Boycott the Arsenal jersey.”
The reaction comes just days after Arsenal won the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years — a moment that would ordinarily have driven a surge in jersey sales.
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Who Is Deel, and Why Does It Matter?
Deel is a US-incorporated payroll and HR software company that serves some 40,000 businesses worldwide. It was co-founded in 2019 by French-Israeli entrepreneur Alex Bouaziz and China-born Shuo Wang.
Arsenal announced the multi-year sleeve sponsorship deal earlier this month, with the Deel logo set to replace the long-running “Visit Rwanda” branding starting with the 2026/27 season.
The controversy centres on Bouaziz’s public expressions of support for Israel following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks — including a social media post reading “Am Yisrael Chai” and statements backing Deel employees called up as Israeli military reservists.
UK-based charity War on Want has also named Arsenal in a report titled Red Card: English Premier League Complicity in Israel’s Atrocities against the Palestinians, alongside five other top clubs.
A Pattern of Boycotts
The Arsenal kit controversy is the latest chapter in Malaysia’s broader consumer boycott movement.
Malaysians have previously targeted global brands including McDonald’s, Starbucks and KFC over their perceived links to Israel — campaigns that visibly dented sales in both Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia, and in some cases helped accelerate the growth of local alternatives.
Malaysia has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel, and public solidarity with Palestine is mainstream across the political and social spectrum.
The online conversation, however, was not one-sided.
Some fans sought a middle ground — asking whether buying an unofficial replica jersey, widely available on local e-commerce platforms for as little as RM20, would still count as complicit.
Others suggested adding a local league patch over the Deel logo as a workaround.
One commenter raised a harder question: pointing out that major technology brands with reported operations or R&D centres in Israel, such as Apple, remain widely used without similar scrutiny. “What’s the difference with the jersey?” he asked — a question that went unanswered in the thread.
The 2026/27 Arsenal home and away kits, bearing the Deel sleeve logo, are already on sale; the third kit has yet to be released.
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